In the second half of XVIIIc, an Armenian business man (my distant relative) came to Poland from northern Turkey. His name was Paschalis Akopyan and in Poland he took the name of Paschalis Jakubowicz. He opened a textile factory in Lipków - near Warsaw, where he manufactured kontush sashes and other decorative fabrics.
The stories told at sunday dinners about history of Zambrzycki and Jakubowicz families resulted with passion for Oriental Art. Frequent travels along the Silk Route and years spent in the Orient (from Persia, Caucasus to Central Asia) resulted in reviving the family tradition of manufacturing fabrics. Considering that over 100 years nobody makes the kontush sashes, my Wife and I, we decided to open a Persjarnia.
The sashes are double sided fabrics, which allows to achieve so called four sided design (sash was folded in half and could be worn in four different ways facing the viewer.
Access to private and museum collections in many countries (USA, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Canada, UK, Switzerland) made it easier for us to recreate historical patterns.
Natural silk is an expensive material, and we wanted to recreate traditional fabrics and make them affordable, so they could come back to the homes of the wide public and be used every day instead of just on special occasions. The priority was to concentrate on reproducing the visual aspects to the last detail, so we chose the high quality material that does a good job pretending to be silk, and still keeps the price on the affordable level.
In the end we mixed natural fiber (the sash must be “breathing”) and some synthetic (prevents from deformation).
Our sashes are easy to tie, they look excellent, are comfortable to wear. They easily wash in a regular washing machine in the temperature NO HOTTER THAN 40C (104 F). You can iron our fabrics with a steam generator or with a regular steam iron set to temperature no higher than SILK (148 oC or 300 OF).
Our fabrics are ready to serve you faithfully for a long time.