What place do textiles occupy in Central Asian communities?
In (final) Episode #4 we discuss:
- textiles in Central Asia’s trade and households (then & now)
- differences in traditions across the region
- textile museums to visit in Caucasus and Central Asia
“La Molesse Sarte,” Photograph of young women inside a textile decorated kiosk, c. 1880-1890, collection Pip Rau, London | Cultural Property News
Transcript
O: How important were textiles in Central Asian economies historically?
V: In Central Asia are definitely historically an important economic commodity. For example, on the Silk roads textiles from Central Asia were pretty important. Carpets, silks, other things very often turn in Eastern Asia, as well as in Europe. It is not uncommon to see a Turkmen carpet in a medieval castle. We always see all these pictures of old European leaders wearing brocade [made of] silk and other beautiful fabrics, which would have come from Central Asia or East Asia. For example, the Pazyryk carpet, which was found in a burial in the Siberian Altai, is dated to 400 BC and is the oldest known surviving pile carpet.
Found in a burial site in Siberia, the Pazyryk carpet is the oldest known surviving pile carpet.
Pile carpet, Pazyryk Culture, 5th – 4th century BC | Hermitage Museum
It was found in the Siberian Altai – obviously very cold, pretty far North. Frozen, definitely. But we actually know from the knots that were used in [its] design that it was probably made in Iran or maybe the Caucasus. So, you know, it was made in Iran or the Caucasus, but it ended up in this burial in Siberia – obviously they were moving around, not domestically, but in that sphere of the Middle of Asia.
O: How do you know where a piece was produced? Are there differences in the weaving traditions among Europe, Middle East and Central Asia?
V: The West, as in Western Europe, does not have a particularly strong pile textile tradition. I mean, they certainly have [pile textiles], but they are not as important or as culturally superior as they are in Central Asia. Like I said before, there are different kinds of piles. In Egypt, for example, they usually do looped textiles. Like you would see in a towel. Rather than the knotted [textiles] that they use in Central Asia. There is also some variation [within the latter]: even if you are doing knotted pile textiles, you can tie the knots in different ways.
And there is a pretty strong regional differentiation of that. For example, in Turkey, for the most part, they use symmetric knots. If the knot is symmetric, it looks the same on the right and the left side, whereas in Persia and a lot of Central Asia, they mostly use asymmetric knots, which of course means that they do not look the same on the left and on the right; they are sort of left-handed or right-handed knots. Those are good ways that you can tell where something was made just [based] on how the knots were tied. Even if everything else is the same.
O: Are there any surviving historical silk textiles? Can we put our finger on where they were produced?
V: Since most silk historically is Chinese [or] East Asian, if you are going to find a silk carpet, it is probably at least somehow tied to China. Today a lot of pure silk carpets come from China. You do sometimes find older carpets, not ancient ones usually, but [from the] Middle Ages, Silk road-period ones that are made either completely with silk or partially with silk [and] that are from Central Asia or Iran. It definitely does happen, but, you know, it comes back to: “can [the craftsmen] get hold of the materials?”. And if you are going to tie 5 million knots, you need a lot of silk. Can you get hold of it? And then [is] someone around going to buy it from you? They are not cheap, of course. But yes, sometimes you do get Silk road medieval period textiles, mainly from China, China borders zones, or sometimes from cities and court type settings in Central Asia.
O: Who would be engaged in making textiles? Was it a special occupation or something practiced in each household?
V: Usually in Central Asia and most of the world, it is the kind of thing that everyone (at least to some extent) does for their own house because it is just easier and faster. Textiles are great for a lot of things, but as anyone who has ever ripped a hole in a pair of jeans knows, they are pretty easy to damage. So there is always something that needs to be fixed and mended. And if everyone has to be fixing and mending anyway then that means everyone knows how to weave, which means everyone can make their own stuff. Usually your household would make their own necessities. You’d make your own carpets, your own clothes, [other] things that you really have to have. And then if you are a wealthier family, you might be able to farm that out – get someone else to do it for you or buy it from somewhere else. But in general, it is the kind of thing everyone would be doing, yes.
O: When comparing textiles produced across communities in the region, what explains the differences? Aesthetics? Technology?
V: It is probably coincidental mainly [and] not aesthetic, because they are such tiny differences that you would have to look quite closely to tell. A normal lay person would not have any idea that there was a difference. So it is not aesthetic. Probably someone in your village or your tribe worked out this way to do it 500 years ago, and that is just how everyone does it now. Whereas in the next village over, they picked a different knot 500 years ago; so now that is how they do it. The main difference between different types of people, especially within a region like Central Asia, like sedentary or nomadic peoples, for instance, would be in quality.
A nomadic group would generally have lower quality, as in lower knot density textiles, whereas people in the city would generally have higher ones. And that is mainly because if you are out and you are working the land, you have to take care of your animals. It’s a rough existence; you know, it is not easy to be a nomad. You do not have time to sit around and waste – people don’t have time to sit around and knot thousands and thousands of knots. You just have to get it done. As long as it holds together and does the job, it does not need to be the most beautiful, luxurious carpet anyone’s ever seen. Whereas in cities it would be more common for people to not make their own carpets or other textiles. It would be more common to be able to buy them from someone else. And then it is more realistic that you might get something of higher quality or finer materials just because, you know, you can pay for it rather than having to waste someone’s time to make it, right?
O: Over the centuries, has there been any significant technological upgrade in the production or the instruments used?
V: It is a very hard question to answer, because, as I said earlier, there is not a lot of textiles left for us to look at. It is usually pretty hard to tell just from, let’s say, […] half a loom from some time period. It’s hard to tell how exactly that loom was used – because those tools are static, right? [The craftsmen] do not have many moving mechanisms usually. There are usually a lot of ways you could wrap your yarns onto the loom and a lot of ways you could use it. So it is really easy for even just different people in the same household to do little things differently that do not make any difference in the long run, but they are different techniques.
There were almost certainly changes and people making new innovations and trying new things, but it is hard to prove consistently what trajectory anything took or what came first and what came later. You can say with really broad strokes: humans invented textiles and this millennium BC, and then pile textiles were invented in this millennium, and then mechanized looms were invented here, but narrower than that it is hard to draw any solid conclusions about small-scale textile changes.
O: Are textiles still as important in the lives of Central Asian families?
V: Yes, they are definitely still important. They come up and they have cultural value. For example, carpets and other household textiles are a very common and popular wedding gift in a lot of Central Asian cultures. As a sense of helping, because this big, expensive carpet [is something] that the newlyweds maybe could not afford to buy themselves, but they do need for their new house. Definitely, they are definitely still important.
During the Russian period and then the Soviet period in Central Asia, a lot of textile work was mechanized – all over the world that happened. But in Central Asia it pretty much brought hand textile work almost to a complete halt, almost completely wiped it out.
Recently, since Central Asian independence, it is sort of an intentional push to revive ancient crafts and cultural tradition from the pre-Russian and pre-Soviet period. So now there’s all kinds of initiatives to set up schools, workshops and shops to teach the locals how to do these things by hand again, and also to reach out to a global audience of consumers who might be interested in these handmade, “historically accurate” items.
For example, a couple of Central Asian countries, as well as some countries in the Middle East and the Caucasus have museums in their major capital cities specifically for carpets. Definitely not a thing that happens in the West: you would never have a museum that is just for carpets. But they are so important and historically and culturally valued today that they merit a beautiful new building with their own scientists and researchers. And then there is also a lot of work being done now throughout Central Asia and sort of the Middle Eurasian continent as a whole to incorporate living traditions into projects like the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists, and record how these textiles are made, what they were used for, what kinds of people use them, what kinds of people made them, and the cultural value that they have for the communities that used to practice them [as well as] the ones that still do. So they definitely still have an important role today in the lived experience of Central Asian life.
O: Finally: what are good places to visit in Central Asia to learn more about textiles?
V: In Turkmenistan, actually, there is a carpet museum; it is called the National Turkmen Carpet Museum, except in Turkmen, of course, which is a great museum. It has got all kinds of things – archeological pieces, historic pieces, Soviet period pieces, which can be very interesting and have very different motifs and designs [compared to] the older stuff. As well as some really beautiful new stuff by living artists who make some really great things. There is [also] a carpet museum in Azerbaijan, which again has beautiful [collections] from historic periods or the modern period by modern artists.
Turkmenistan actually [also] has a carpet holiday – a national holiday specifically for carpets, weaving and textile history of the Turkmen people. And they have all kinds of festivals, exhibitions and scientific conferences and all kinds of cool things, specifically focused on textiles, how they are made, where they come from and what they mean. It is definitely a cool cultural activity to check out if you ever have the chance.
In Uzbekistan there are a couple of carpet workshops. They do not have historical, archeological pieces; they are [rather] modern working workshops that make modern carpets for modern buyers. But […] if you are interested, you can stop by, have a tour, [and] they’ll walk you through the whole process. You can talk to the weavers, you can see what they are doing, which is a really great way to get the whole life cycle of the textile in a 45-minute window. If it is something you are interested in. I am sure they are everywhere, but there is one that is reasonably well-known in Samarkand, and there is another that is pretty well-known in Khiva.
From Olesya: I would also personally recommend the State Museum of Folk Crafts in Tashkent. They have a nice collection of carpets and textiles from all across Uzbekistan which display different motifs & patterns that are common in different parts of the country.
Many of the things we discussed with Victoria are surely the tip of the iceberg, but we both hope that this series invigorated your interest in the topic and that you will go on and explore more of it from the position of a more informed appreciator. And even if you don’t feel as informed, it probably does not matter on many occasions, right? We don’t need to be experts to understand that something we are looking at speaks to us. And is beautiful.
I think that the carpets are a great way to get people interested because it is beautiful and it is art. It is a thing everyone can appreciate without knowing the details of the history or the language.
Victoria Sluka
Not Just Silk 