When traveling the modern-day Silk Road, you'll discover stunning textiles, master craftsmen, and techniques dating back to the 10th century.
Fergana Valley is a green sliver of land bordered by Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Silkworms and the mulberry trees off which they feed are indigenous to China. The Han Dynasty, credited with developing sericulture (silk farming), closely guarded the secrets of silk—they even declared smuggling silkworms out of the country to be a crime punishable by death. The story goes, however, that silk reached Central Asia courtesy of a Chinese princess in 440 A.D., who secreted silkworms out of China in her hairpiece for the love of a prince.
Silkworm cocoons are first boiled for their silk fiber.
Rasuljon Mirzaahmedov is a ninth-generation abr-band in the town of Margilon who produces silk ikat the way his ancestors did. The silkworm cocoon is first boiled in a large pot of water, causing the cocoon to unravel. The resulting thread is spun onto bobbins, boiled again to soften, and then strung on frames where a pattern is mapped out and bound with cotton.
It is then dyed in big vats of color made from natural dyes such as blue indigo, green from usma leaves, and yellow from pomegranate skin. Once dyed, the silk threads that make up the warp are threaded onto a loom. The weft is either cotton (the resulting ikat is known as *adrasa)*or silk (the resulting ikat is known as atlas).
Ikat is woven after the warp threads are dyed, using a resist-dying technique.
Silk was not the only commodity traded on the Silk Road; ceramics were also a coveted commodity that eventually made their way from China into Central Asia. Not far from Margilon in Fergana Valley is Rishtan, a town famous for its impurity-free clay and a blue glaze called ishkor.
Ceramics by Rustam Usmanov, master craftsman.
Rishtan is one of the oldest ceramic centers in Central Asia, dating back to the 10th century. Today, potters make up a tenth of this little town's population. During my visit, I stopped by master ceramist Rustam Usmanov's studio in a courtyard filled with fruit trees and shaded by a canopy of grapes.
Rustam, his son Damier, and his nephew Ruslan took me through the process of making a ceramic plate. First, a plate or bowl is shaped on a potter's wheel. After "throwing" the plate, it is dipped in a white clay mixture called angupand then dried at room temperature for four days before being fired in a traditional kiln. It is then painted (one plate takes between 25-40 hours) and glazed using the traditional ishkorglaze, made from a plant of the same name that Rishtan is famous for.
Ruslan (right) and Damier have been learning the art of ceramics from Rustam since they were ten years old.
Fergana Valley will transport you back in time, to be sure. But in a country at a crossroads of East and West, ancient and modern, it is fitting that young Damier and Ruslan, who began learning the trade from their master craftsman uncle when they were just ten, practice the ancient craft while listening to Russian rap.