About the Arts & Crafts in Uzbekistan

 March 10, 2012

Silk. From the book “A carpet ride to Kiva, I learnt that China’s secret about how to make silk, (the silk worm) was transported along the silk road in the elaborative hairstyle of a Chinese princess. Marrying a Barbarian, she was prepared to do, but living without silk was inpossible. In Khiva an oasis in thedersert, the people know since how to make silk and how to dye it with natural colours (Walnut for bwown/ silver,  Madder root (from Afghanistan) for red, dried pomegranate skins for deep gold, indigo; a blend of onion skins, quince, apple vine and mulberry leaves gave a cheerful buttercup yellow.

The silk is both used for weaving and for embroidery

hey use either the silk alone, silk mixed with cotton 50-50, or cotton alone. In the museum store I bought a silk shawl, in ikat weaving, beautiful colours!

Weaving:

In the governmentwarehouse I bought 3 lenghts of mixed cotton-silk, to decorate our walls. See pictures. T

Embroidery. In the museum I found embroidered materials, for decoration , in two styles: “suzani” , stitches are made next to each other filling up a line or flower etc. Another one is like crocheting. I bought a handbag done like that ( picture above). The symbols are interesting: pomegranate and almond again, for love and good luck!  

Pottery & china; The lady in the museum shop told me that her fathers family made the pots, somewehere on the road to Samarkand. The craft is as old as the world. I couldn’t resist to buy one bowl because of its nice design and shape, and put it to good use making a cheese souffle in it.  The china goes back to the 20st century only, and has very often cotton in its decorations. Here is our teapot and cups.

Wood carving- well now this is impressive! They use the Islamic tradition of non figurative decorations, but also leaves and flowers.

Miniature painting. This is an old art, which they used for decoration of books. Nowadays ( we spoke to a miniaturist painter at work in an old former Madrassah, muslim school), students can get a government paid 5 year education/ training to become a miniature painter.

A 6x 10 inches picture (15x 25 cms) costs 250 american dollars. And would take 4 weeks to make. They are unique products and show very different scenes, poetic, landscapes, etc. For Roberts birthday a bought a small one of a bird, 20 dollar.  The actual paining is 4x7 cms. (1,5 x 2,5 inch). They also had a lovely, colourful 8-angular low table for sale, which would fit perfectly in our still empty room, but that cost 2500 dollar, so I am only dreaming of it now. Roberts’ practical remark was:  what will we do with it when we are done here after 2,5 years? It doesn’t fit in our relatively crowded house in Renkum anyway.