Uzbek silk

Ikat fabrics in Tashkent Applied Art Museum

I have been pondering a great deal on how to give you a taste of my trip to Uzbekistan without overloading you with detail and having ridiculously long posts, I saw so much it was, at times, overwhelming and we were so well conducted round the country by our Stitchtopia tour leaders, Karin and Bean and our delightful local guide Mashkhura, that I managed to take over 2000 photos. I have whittled them down a bit now, but still, you could only manage a fraction of what is left before your eyes glazed over!

I think I will start with silk, since, along with cotton, this is one of the industries Uzbekistan is known for. It is such a labour intensive material to produce, and it was incredibly absorbing seeing that production from cocoon to finished product. In Margilan, which is in the Fergana Valley we went to the Yodgorlik Silk Factory and the Margilan Crafts Development Centre. First we saw the process of winding off the silk from the cocoons, which are steeped in very hot water to soften the sticky substance which binds them together and allow the threads to unspool. Ducking into a long dark steamy room we found this lady and her companion sitting by a deep cauldron. Swooshing the hot water round with a stick, she was stirring and lifting the cocoons and gently pulling them apart as she began the process of separating the individual threads

boiling the cocoons and separating the threads

what remains from the cocoons after winding

The incredibly fine threads were passed across to her companion where they were wound off using this large wheel to turn a much smaller spool. Though fine the thread almost felt like wire when touched with a finger as it spooled off.

winding groups of threads off for processing - they were such lovely smiley ladies

In another, much lighter room we were shown the marking and tying the bundles of warp thread to produce complex patterns. The mechanism for tying involved something which looked like a wood turning lathe and roll upon roll of sellotape. It was delightfully noisy and very efficient with the sellotape twisted half way through tying so that the sticky side is never in contact with the silk fibers.

marking up the bundles of warp thread with the pattern

Once marked and tied the bundles of warp thread are steeped in a great metal vat of dye. This process might be repeated more than once, depending on the complexity and number of colours in the pattern. If you look closely at the image below you can see the next set of marks, ready for a second tying process before the yellow is overdyed.

once the thread is dyed you can begin to see the pattern emerge

Then the silk is warped up - you can see that process in the video I link to further down. It is woven, either on hand looms like these below, with foot pedals to operate the heddles and a mechanism for throwing the shuttle back and forth; swish click, swish click, swish click, swish click, the warp threads weighted at the end with great metal weight to hold them taut.

Alternatively there are these wonderful looking mechanised looms. The sound as one entered this room was pretty overwhelming, and it made me wonder what the vast factories full of looms during the industrial revolution must have sounded like.

the noise in this room was simply astonishing

All of this weaving produces the Ikat, or Abr-Bandi (cloud tying) fabric that you can find being sold across the country in a veritable rainbow of colours. Admittedly many of them are more busy and colourful than we are used to in Europe, but I found them magical, and was unable to resist purchasing a couple of lengths which I am, at the moment, simply gazing at and stroking periodically!

Pile upon tempting pile of fabrics

The interior of the Bazaar at Urgut - it seemed to go on for miles!

There is a wonderful in depth video of this process here if you would like to know more. The silk winding ladies at the beginning are the ones in the pictures above. As with all of the folk we met there, they were delightfully friendly, eager to share their skill and incredibly (and justifiably) proud of what they were producing.

Of course is it not just fabric that is made with the silk. In Bukhara we also saw carpets being made on upright looms, by hand, with dazzling skill, speed and dexterity.

I was amused to note that several of the ladies were simultaneously listening to their phones - in fact one seemed to be keeping half an eye on a cookery programme!

The salesroom was awash with carpets of all sizes, colours and levels of refinement and we were shown examples of them all. There were relatively "rough" woolen carpets, then came cotton, with a finer knot count, silk knotted onto a cotton warp was next, but the finest carpets of all, silk knotted onto a silk warp were so fluid and delicate they could be folded up into a small bundle for sending out. 

a sea of exquisite carpets

As a grand finale we were shown the carpet below which was knotted by two ladies, one each side of the loom, so that, when cut off and finished, it became a double sided carpet, with different pattern and colour on either side

this silk one had a drape like fabric

and was revealed to be a magic double sided carpet

Such delicate and detailed designs

I would have loved to be able to afford one of these beautiful artworks, just a small one to set beside my bed to caress my feet first thing in the morning, but one thought about the cat chaps' propensity for scrabbling enthusiastically at any carpet in the house and I decided that it just wasn't worth the risk! They came first and would be so sad if they weren't allowed to spend their days asleep on their very own quilt in the middle of my bed!

I hope this gives you a small snapshot of the wonderful crafts created from those tiny little cocoons steeped in boiling water.