Craft ateliers

Most of what is sold as Uzbek craft is still made by hand, by families who have done the same work for generations, and much of it is made a long way from where it is sold. The blue and turquoise ceramics of Rishtan come from courtyard workshops in the Fergana Valley, where the clay is local and the glaze is ground from ishkor, the ash of a desert plant. The ikat silk of Margilan is dyed thread by thread before it is woven, which is what gives the pattern its blurred edges. Kokand has kept its woodcarvers, and Bukhara its gold embroiderers and miniature painters, working in the same lanes where their work is sold under the trading domes. The suzani embroidered in the villages around Bukhara and Nurata are still made for dowries first and for buyers second.

An atelier visit with us is not a demonstration. We arrange to arrive when the potters are at the wheel and the looms are running, and we stay long enough to see a piece move through more than one stage: the throwing and the painting, the tying of the warp and the weaving, the drawing of a miniature and the laying of gold thread on velvet. In Margilan, the working factory is a place of noise and colour rather than a showroom, and you see where the silk comes from before you see a finished length of it. You are welcome to buy directly from the maker, and equally welcome not to.

Your private guide translates more than language. They know which families to visit, which questions to ask and which patterns carry a meaning: the pomegranate and the ram’s horn, the almond and the bird. A morning in one workshop, taken slowly, teaches more than a day of short stops, and we plan the days so that there is time to sit, drink tea and watch. Craft is the thread that connects the Fergana Valley to Bukhara, and a journey built around it sees the country from the inside.