Albanian Carpet Industry Gets High-Tech Assistance : Manufacturing: Rug makers hope computer software and Western assistance will help revive a business that virtually collapsed after 1993.

In the last two decades, Albania has exported thousands of square yards of carpets to Western traders who sold them for many times their initial price but never credited their origin to the poor Balkan country.

Now, with the aid of advanced computer software and Western expertise, makers of Albanian-brand pile carpets are ready for some recognition.

Carpet-makers think they can attract buyers with strong local designs using computers that can process and translate instructions for weavers from a palette with 16 million colors, maintaining the color integrity of local artists’ work.

“But we are not going to compete with anyone--what we are doing is totally unique,” said William Walters, of U.S.-based Booth & Walters Inc.

Walters, subcontracted by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Office of Project Services, headed a $200,000 hardware and software project, paid for by a UNDP donation, at Albania’s Textile and Fashion Design Center.

He left Albania recently at the end of the design project but UNDP has just received a request from the Albanian government for additional funds to revive the project.

Walters described Albania’s previous pile carpet output as copies of Persian designs exported to Switzerland, Italy, Britain, Greece and Hungary.

“I always felt that for this industry to be viable again, it needed to express Albania in its designs, not Persian, Chinese or Caucasian,” Walters said.

“At least in the carpet industry there is something called novelty of origin and in this sense the [four-decades-long communist] isolation has been an advantage,” he added.

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Albania has been producing pile carpets for the last 20 years to fill foreign orders. At the peak of production it turned out 592,000 square feet of pile carpets a year and virtually all of it was exported.

Under the centralized communist economy, Albanian carpets of 360,000 knots per square yard sold for $175 per square yard and were resold for many times that price. Pile carpets with a density of 120,000 knots per square yard sold for $80 per square yard.

When the economy teetered near the verge of collapse in 1993, production virtually halted, but now there is new hope.

Paintings by Albanian artists are “translated” into designs for carpets that are woven on old wooden looms in a privatized handicraft enterprise.

They range from imaginative, colorful scenes to a crucified Christ drawn in black over a white backdrop to modern concepts of Balkan pastoral scenes. One shows a river of sheep coming down mountains intertwining with a river-like shepherd’s beard.

“When the works are free from nationalistic themes, they are easier to sell because people worldwide seek to identify themselves in art,” said Xhevahir Kolgjini, the center’s art director. “And what we have produced has got cosmopolitan feeling.”

He thinks that artistic values should eventually replace size as a means to calculate the value of the carpets.

One painter said Albanian painters were receiving good money for converting their work into carpets designs. “We are not [Salvador] Dalis. That is why they are bringing this technique here,” he said.

A 8-foot, 2-inch by 5-foot, 9-inch pile carpet with 250,000 knots per square yard woven from a magnificent drawing by artist Gazmend Leka has sold for $2,498.

The carpet industry is based in nine towns, employing 910 workers, down from more than 3,300 when it worked at full capacity.

Walters hopes to woo “avant-garde buyers” in the West and Japan who would not just seek comfort but also artistic work.

To help Albanian carpets become better known in the West, it is hoped to send an exhibition to European venues.

“We think that if they got out with an Albanian label and artwork they would be truly unique and will be sought after,” Walters added.

The plan is to issue only limited editions which could hold their value against Persian carpets.

“Carpets are the sort of product that have got that little sense of mystery and exoticism, the same qualities that sell tourism, and, if marketed properly, there will be a future for the industry in Albania,” he added.