Armand has a long family history leading to a career in tapestry restoration and dealing. Armond’s Turkish-Armenian parents escaped to Bulgaria during the Holocaust and later imigrated to France with a surviving grandfather. With their long history in embroidery, carpet restoration and tailoring, his family started a family business in Marseilles. Armand learned to speak Turkish from his grandfather and grew up constantly watching his father doing restoration and working with his hands. Armand started sewing at the age of 5 and at 11 worked with a design teacher learning higher technical skills. When Armand was 17, he left school to devote himself full-time to carpet restoration.
When Armand was 20, he took over the family business when his father had a stroke. Growing up around embroidery, and being very ambitious, he taught himself the difficult techniques and art of embroidery restoration and then started finding pieces at auction in such places as Christies for restoration.
In 1992, Armand met Hasan Opçin and George Jevremovic at a conference in Hamburg where they became friends and collaborated on sending European fine art objects to Turkey for restoration. After some years, Armand became ATC’s European representative and advisor. The new venture was a great success and over time evolved into what is presently known as Antique Textile Conservation.
Olivia learned how to restore tapestries when she was 21 from a Rumanian artist living in France and worked in various French tapestry shops. Through the business world of carpet dealers in Paris, she met Armand and they got married.
Today Olivia and Armand run the Deroyan Carpet and Tapestry Gallery in Paris where they buy and sell important tapestries to collectors and museums. They also work as conservation and restoration advisors for ATC where Armand oversees production.
Together their greatest pleasure in life is to discover good pieces and give them a second life.
