TEHRAN.(Honaronline) - Edward Khachatourian was the initiator of modern furniture design and manufacturing in Iran with scientific support, cultural insight and progressive mindset by combining Western and Eastern art.
The use of furniture in the daily life of Iranians was once limited only to the nobles and the rich. Carpenters who came to Iran from Hungary made furniture for the nobles, and those who studied abroad returned with noble sofas and hired carpenters to make sofas based on those experiences. This work was called “Lenge-Sazi” - pair making - however the sofas that were made were mostly in Rococo style. Iranian carpenters copied these sofas and sometimes made changes in them, but there was still no interior design in Iran.
Eduard Khachaturian, who studied in France, started producing furniture based on European designs in the 1930s and 1940s by hiring a carpenter and using European architectural magazines, at the same time, he also implemented his own designs. Edward was an Iranian-Armenian, who also loved the culture of the East, and he can be considered one of the first interior designers and architects of Iran. He was very interested in art and bought the works of people like Marko Gregorian and used them in interior decoration.
In the 1950s, the famous Spanish architect Ricardo Bufil built a house in the West settlement, but he could not complete the project due to the time of the Islamic Revolution. After that, Edward Khachatourian was introduced to him to continue the interior design work of the house, and the work he did remained as a brilliant work in Khachatourian’s career. Among Edward’s other works, we can mention the Iranian Senate, the design of the Iranian parts of Saadabad and Niavaran palaces.
Edward gradually abandoned the sofas that were inspired by modern Italian, French, Chinese, Japanese and Indian models and for the first time designed sofas in which he used Iranian elements.