The Making of the Carpet

The process begins with the artwork by the artist Medina. Its colors, rhythms, and forms become the foundation for a woven interpretation. Each painting is meticulously digitized in high resolution, both for archival preservation and to enable the creation of new works derived from its visual language.

These ultra-high-resolution digital reproductions are then subjected to detailed visual analysis before being transposed onto millimetre grid paper. At this stage, the composition of each painting is recalibrated into the precise geometry required for weaving. The grid paper becomes both analytical tool and interpretive surface, with each square assigned a specific thread color. Through this coded system, painterly gestures are deconstructed and reassembled according to the discipline of knot-based production.

This phase demands not only technical accuracy but artistic interpretation. Decisions are made collectively regarding how to render tonal gradients, layered brushstrokes, and atmospheric depth through the density and sequencing of knots. The chromatic framework of each carpet is carefully established — calculating the number of tones required and developing a custom dye palette. In each carpet, more than fifty colors are used, along with over two hundred additional shades created through their mixtures.

The threads used are specially dyed to match the artwork's palette, prepared as the material vocabulary of the future textile. The production itself is a collective process: master artisans work in close coordination, translating the coded grids into woven form — knot by knot, line by line. Their expertise, developed through traditional methods transmitted across generations, shapes the final artworks. Thread by thread, the image is reconstructed on the loom, revealing how Medina's visual language takes on a new material form.

Series of carpets is the result of a special partnership between Studio Medina and the Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum, realized in close cooperation with the museum's Traditional Technology Department, under the technical and artistic direction of Taryer Bashirov, Honored Artist of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Six carpets have been created to date:

1. Flowers for Mothers

2. Flowers. Composition No. 7

3. Memories (based on the works of Auguste Herbin)

4. Nefertiti

5. Winter

6. Street in Baku

More carpets are currently in development, continuing the dialogue between Medina's painterly language and the traditional weaving craft of the Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum's artisans.