Kimchak Pass & Fergana Valley
By the time our train arrived in Tashkent, it was snowing pretty fiercly. Shortly before dawn, we left the train station and starting asking at the assembled taxis outside to see how much it would cost to go to Fergana City, usually about a 5 hour drive over the mountains into the Fergana Valley. Normally, a shared taxi should cost around $8, and a chartered taxi (all to yourself) about $25 under normal conditions. These guys were all asking for $100. Since their were about 5-6 taxis, they all, standing around, colluded with each other and maintained this absurdly high price. This isn't that unusual at the train stations and airports. "Snow" they said- "No one goes to Fergana."
So we left by metro and went to the Sobir Rahimov metro station, which is where the mashrutno/shared taxi stand to Fergana is. There we anticipated a plethora of vehicles going to Fergana or Kokand. Normally there are. But today, as it was snowing, not so much.
However, we did manage to get somebody to charter a taxi for $35. As this is only $10 above what the guidebook said, allowing for snow and inflation it wasn't too bad. A lot better than $100.
We soon discovered why none of the taxis were going to Fergana. The Kimchak pass is about 2000 meters high, and as we were approaching it the weather got worse and worse.
Visibility was down to about 50 feet due to fog and snow.
It didn't seem as if anyone could live here under these conditions; cold, steep hills, scrubby ground. But the odd village did dot the landscape here and there, and occasionally a herd of goats, small cattle, or sheep would cross the road.
The pass is a major chokepoint on the trade routes that go from Southern Russia to China, so there was a lot of truck traffic sharing the road with us. I noticed a number of jacknifed trailers on the other side of the road as we were climbing up, and at one point a tractor trailer in front of us lost traction and began to slide backwards down the mountain. We simply weaved around it and another struggling truck, and went on our way. No seatbelts, of course.
I was afriad that the rest of our trip was going to be a cold, lightless photographers nightmare, but as soon as we crested the pass, the skies became bright and clear.
The Syr Darya
Trucks after the Kimchak pass
some of these photos are from the return trip, but it seems to be appropriate to put them here. Coming back a few days later from the Fergana Valley, we shared a taxi with a couple of other Uzbeks.
they kindly stopped for me to take some pictures.
The road to Fergana
We stopped for Lunch in Angren, an old mining and nuclear power town. They stil obviously maintain some old links with the past.
Apartment Blocks in Angren
After you leave the mountains you come upon a sort of desert area, with irrigated fields on one said and scrubland on the other.
But, after about another hour of travel, the legendary fertility of the Fergana Valley becomes evident. This is the most densely populated valley in Central Asia, although there aren't many huge towns. It's also the agricultural center of the region, and has been since antiquity. Babur, the exiled Timurid who once ruled this valley but was driven out and forced to go to India (where he founded the Mogul empire), waxed poetic about the produce of the region. Though he sat amongst the riches and splendor of Delhi, he would always long for the simple Fergana melons of his youth.
FERGANA CITY
Fergana City is a rather recent arrival to the scene, being constructed by Russians in the 19th century. It is the least Uzbek, most Russian influenced town in the country. It is also the best center where one can stay and travel through the valley, with plentiful and good hotels, taxis, and other amenities.
One could easily think that one was a small Bohemian spa town here, if it wasn't for the people.
The town has a lovely and quite large park area, with a huge statue of Al-Fergani, a famus mathematician from the valley.
You can also play billiards outside.
The Author's long suffering better half
CHUST & NAMANGAN
We were very fortunate in the Fergana valley section of the trip. The weather in the valley was very nice (a bit cold, but clear). The tone of the Fergana valley is quite different than the rest of the country. Khorezm and The Zerafshan river plain (samarqand) have grand old Imperial cities and giant features; vast deserts, wide rivers, giant mountains. The Fergana is much more low key. It's more agricultural, the peaks of the surrounding Tian Shan mountains loom in the far distance, but the valley is so gently sloped and large that it seems to be no valley at all, but a plain. The habitations consist of small towns and hamlets, with a few cities of moderate size scattered about (other than Tashkent, all Uzbek cities are of moderate size).
But, if the lands beyond the Kimchak constitute the heart of Historical Transoxania, the Fergana is the modern center of gravity of Uzbekistan. It is the most densely populated section of Central Asia. It contains the second and fourth largest cities of the country (Namangan and Andijan), and each of these cities has numerous outliers, unlike Samarqand and Bukhara, which pretty much stop in the desert.
We set out the second day in the valley to find the city of Chust, famed for its production of knives. The Fergana Valley is home to the most notable production of knives in Central asia, and each city has a distinct style. Chust is related to be the nicest, and the guidebook stated that there was a knife factory open to the public- a factory in the sense of "a collection of artisans" rather than a mass production facility.
Kinves are worn to ward off the evil eye, and the water used in knife grinding is supposed to be a curative for all manner of diseases.
We went down to the bazaar in Fergana, and caught a mashrutka to Margilan. Although Fergana is bigger than Margilan, Margilan is more of a transportation hub- its about 15 minutes ride from Fergana.
Once in Margilan we found the Depot where buses go to Namangan, along the north rim of the valley. We were there about 30 minutes before the bus departed, so we ducked around the corner to get a breakfast of Somsa on the street outside.
The guy that was making Somsa had no change, so instead of 400 sum ($0.30), we paid 500 sum ($0.38). We then returned to the bus. The fact, however, that we had overpaid the man 100 sum apparently bothered him, as about 10 minutes later, as we were sitting in the bus, he arrived with suitable compensation; an entire tree branch full of persimmons.
That's a lot of persimmons for eight cents. But, as I said before, most folks in Uzbekistan seem to be pathologically honest and generous to travellers. Except, of course, for Taxi drivers, who are ifrit-spawn the world over.
Getting to Namangan took about 3 hours; mostly because we stopped at numerous little villages. We passed through Rishdon, a great place to get ceramics that, unfortunately, we never got to stop in. But if you have the time I have heard that it is quite nice.
After arriving in Namangan, we had to wait for 35 minutes or so at the central bus station for transportation to Chust, which is not a terribly big place. That was alright. In the bus station itself are a number of tables with food and coffee available. The "last" table actually has very good coffee, the only time in U-Stan that I found a decent cup ' joe.
Good coffee and good company in the Namangan Bus Station
This is the lady to buy cakes from at the Bus Station
After the appropriate time, our bus arrived. The buses tend to be old and strange looking, but they are usually pretty reliable.
Uzbek intercity bus
We piled onto the bus, and began our trip to Chust. Just before we left Namangan, the bus stopped, as luck would have it, just in front of the Philology faculty of the University of Namangan, and our bus filled up with foreign language students, most of whom were (to my pleasant surprise) very good looking ladies.
It was obvious to everyone that we were foreigners, so the girls immediately began speaking to us in English, most of them being able to speak it quite well. This was one of three occasions where we found good speakers of english. They all stayed on the bus for the better part of an hour, then most departed at an outlying village.
One of them inquired if I was married. I pointed to the woman next to me and stated that this was my wife (I thought it pretty obvious, as she clearly isn't Uzbek). The lady sighed and expressed voluble dissapointment.
It's good to know the pimp hand isn't totally rusty.
Our travelling companions (marriage minded woman, second from right)
In addition to marriage proposals, we also recieved an invitation to dinner from an older woman who spoke nothing but Uzbek, and wanted us to meet her 13 grandchildren.
85 year old Uzbek lady- the good air keeps folks young
Also, we discovered that people take the "one eyebrow" thing very seriously, Perhaps I mentioned it before, but having one single eyebrow (what we call a "uni-brow) is considered the acme of female beauty. Women who do not have their eyebrows connected will pencil in the gap, as demosntrated below.
As we left the Namangan area, our bus, which was totally packed to the rafters, had a bit of a suspension problem. It lurched, then canted alarmingly to the left. Such small matters do not deter valiant Uzbek drivers, so we continued on driving tilted for another 5 minutes or so, despite the grinding and crunching sound coming from the rear left wheel (whose shocks had collapsed). After a bit, this added friction was too much for the engine to handle, along with the 70 or so people sardined inside, and it finally gave up the ghost, everyone then piling out onto the side of the road.
The men on the bus began immediately tinkering with the engine.
While the rest of the passengers (several dozen) gathered around us in a circle and began asking us all sorts of questions, translated by the two english speaking women who remained. After some time it became apparent that the bus was not going to reach Chust in a timely manner, so we began to climb, in groups, onto other buses (themselves already packed) that were heading for Chust.
We eventually reached the town center, and walked to the factory, which was permanently closed. Disapointment, as it had already taken most of the day to get here (one can really only visit one city a day in the Fergana, as transport, while fun, is not fast). So we went to the Bazaar, where we saw some nice melons.
Also in the bazaar we found a small forge and shop that turns out knives and various other edged tools (saws and axes). they forge the blades and heads from steel.
For the knives, the steel has a smoky "watered" look to it. Mohammad (the chief craftsman) claims it is "Damascus Steel"- made by the same method famed in Damascus and Toledo. I am not sure if it is done to the same intensity that the famous blades of the levant were, but it has the same look and weight.
Once the blade is formed, it is then sharpened and buffed to a nce sheen.
the Knife Making Crew
Muhammad is a real craftsman. The knives take quite some time to produce, and he had only a few examples around that were complete. One knife he refused to sell because of an imperfection in the blade that wasn't visible to me, but bothered him, it was destined for the scrap heap (how often would you encounter that sort of attitude in Western Europe or the US?). We bought two blades; one with a mother of pearl haft for about $18, and one with a polished horn haft for about $7. The distinguishing feature of Chust knives are their large and relatively unadorned haft (handle), most of the other Fergana valley knives have skinny hafts that are quite guady. I prefer this style.
This is not my picture, but here is a typical Chust knife:
After obtaining our knives, we wended our way back to the Mashrutka stand, passing the obligatory sheep in the town parrk;
By the time we returned to Fergana, it was dark, so we went back to our hotel, the Ziyorat (English speaking staff, best place in the valley to sleep, $12 doubles) and hit the sack.
MARGILAN
The next morning we returned to Margilan to do the principal thing we wanted to do in the Fergana Valley, visit the Yogdorlik silk factory.
Uzbekistan sits astride the old Silk road, and sericulture (the harvesting of silkworms) has been known since around 6,000 BC, when it was first developed in China. The Chinese attempted to keep the methods of sericulture secret, but the technology had arrived in Fergana by at least 300 AD. Currently Uzbekistan produces about 30,000 tons of silk per year, most of it in Margilan. The Yogdorlik factory was started in the 1980s by folks who wanted to maintain an alternative to Soviet style mechanization. Although the scale of the factory is large, they follow traditional spinning and dying procedures, and their silk is amongst the highest quality in the world. Uzbek silk is made in a style known as Ikat.
Silkworms, in this case the bombyx mori, eat mulberry leaves, wich are abundant in fergana, they thin spin a cocoon in preparation for turning into a moth.
early stage silkworm cocoons, they have not yet turned white or grown very large.
The cocoon consists of a single thread of silk, wich is slightly over one kilometer long. this is one of the factors that makes silk strong; in addition to the incredible tensile strength of silk, which exceeds steel, each "sheet" of silk is woven from extremely long monofilaments.
These cocoons are collected in sacks, and delivered to the factory.
Before the moth can emerge and break the silk thread, the cocoons are steamed in order to prepare them for unwinding. (Sorry vegans!)
In the ultra-traditional way (Yogdorlik has absolutely traditional as well as semi-mechanized spinning, although all dying and design is traditional) the thread is then teased out of each individual cocooon, and readied for spooling.
The silk is then spooled onto large reels, and this is used to weave the heavy "raw" looking silks used for many carpets, etc.
This is extremely slow, however, so Yogdorlik has large setups where the spooling is more industrially efficient.
Each thread is almost to small to see with the naked eye, but each of the cocoons bobbing in the hot water has a thread that loops over the plastic wheel, and three of these threads are eventually wound together into a larger thread.
Three of these larger threads are then wound together and spooled onto a small bobbin.
The bobbins are then taken to a spooling room, where three small bobbins are spooled onto a medium bobbin (winding the three threads together into a cable-like larger thread).
Eventually, the silk ends up on a very large bobbin, where it is ready to be marked, dyed, and woven.
The silk is formed into "cords"
And then is laid out on a frame, where a master designer marks and tapes off sections to be dyed.
Once marked, it is taken off the frame, and brought to the dye house.
Dyes are made from natural vegetable material,
As well as metal for the iron oxide colors:
The cords are essentially "tie-dyed", with wrappings being removed, then the cord put in a sack and submerged in the boiling dye.
Wrappings are re-arranged, and other colors added to the cord.
Then the cords are dried in ovens.
The cords are then transported to the looms, where they are cross woven with either toehr silk, for pure silk textiles, or occasionally with linen or (most often) cotton, for blends.
Uzbek teen hearthrob
In addition to Ikat silks like these, they also weave carpets from silk and wool, or silk and cotton. Carpets here are "persian" style rather than the more north african that I am used to.
The patterns are "embroidered" through a field of textile.
Students learning the carpet making process
and then they are shorn off to provide a level carpet surface. It can take up to a day to do one centimeter od a complex design. Even in U-Stan, these carpets are expensive ($500 and up). In New York, however, they can cost ten times that.
more than a few bandaged thumbs
They also embrodier the "suzane" table cloth type things.
The tour of the factory is free, and supposedly available in English- although that day they could not find the sole English speaker so the foreman, Sobirjon, lead us aroudn and gave us a Russian language tour.
At the end of the tour they have a shop. There is no pressure to buy and the prices are quite cheap. We got 4 ikats, a hat, and a couple of bolts of silk (18 feet long each) for less than $100. Not bad really.
Yogdorlik silk shop
The tour is designed, I think, less to sell than to show off the craft. Everyone there seemed genuinely proud of their work, was quite courteous, and its definitely photo-friendly. Be sure to bring lens cleaning cloths, as going from the cold to the steam can fog up your glass.
A few other shots of the silk factory:
By the time our train arrived in Tashkent, it was snowing pretty fiercly. Shortly before dawn, we left the train station and starting asking at the assembled taxis outside to see how much it would cost to go to Fergana City, usually about a 5 hour drive over the mountains into the Fergana Valley. Normally, a shared taxi should cost around $8, and a chartered taxi (all to yourself) about $25 under normal conditions. These guys were all asking for $100. Since their were about 5-6 taxis, they all, standing around, colluded with each other and maintained this absurdly high price. This isn't that unusual at the train stations and airports. "Snow" they said- "No one goes to Fergana."
So we left by metro and went to the Sobir Rahimov metro station, which is where the mashrutno/shared taxi stand to Fergana is. There we anticipated a plethora of vehicles going to Fergana or Kokand. Normally there are. But today, as it was snowing, not so much.
However, we did manage to get somebody to charter a taxi for $35. As this is only $10 above what the guidebook said, allowing for snow and inflation it wasn't too bad. A lot better than $100.
We soon discovered why none of the taxis were going to Fergana. The Kimchak pass is about 2000 meters high, and as we were approaching it the weather got worse and worse.
Visibility was down to about 50 feet due to fog and snow.
It didn't seem as if anyone could live here under these conditions; cold, steep hills, scrubby ground. But the odd village did dot the landscape here and there, and occasionally a herd of goats, small cattle, or sheep would cross the road.
The pass is a major chokepoint on the trade routes that go from Southern Russia to China, so there was a lot of truck traffic sharing the road with us. I noticed a number of jacknifed trailers on the other side of the road as we were climbing up, and at one point a tractor trailer in front of us lost traction and began to slide backwards down the mountain. We simply weaved around it and another struggling truck, and went on our way. No seatbelts, of course.
I was afriad that the rest of our trip was going to be a cold, lightless photographers nightmare, but as soon as we crested the pass, the skies became bright and clear.
The Syr Darya
Trucks after the Kimchak pass
some of these photos are from the return trip, but it seems to be appropriate to put them here. Coming back a few days later from the Fergana Valley, we shared a taxi with a couple of other Uzbeks.
they kindly stopped for me to take some pictures.
The road to Fergana
We stopped for Lunch in Angren, an old mining and nuclear power town. They stil obviously maintain some old links with the past.
Apartment Blocks in Angren
After you leave the mountains you come upon a sort of desert area, with irrigated fields on one said and scrubland on the other.
But, after about another hour of travel, the legendary fertility of the Fergana Valley becomes evident. This is the most densely populated valley in Central Asia, although there aren't many huge towns. It's also the agricultural center of the region, and has been since antiquity. Babur, the exiled Timurid who once ruled this valley but was driven out and forced to go to India (where he founded the Mogul empire), waxed poetic about the produce of the region. Though he sat amongst the riches and splendor of Delhi, he would always long for the simple Fergana melons of his youth.
FERGANA CITY
Fergana City is a rather recent arrival to the scene, being constructed by Russians in the 19th century. It is the least Uzbek, most Russian influenced town in the country. It is also the best center where one can stay and travel through the valley, with plentiful and good hotels, taxis, and other amenities.
One could easily think that one was a small Bohemian spa town here, if it wasn't for the people.
The town has a lovely and quite large park area, with a huge statue of Al-Fergani, a famus mathematician from the valley.
You can also play billiards outside.
The Author's long suffering better half
CHUST & NAMANGAN
We were very fortunate in the Fergana valley section of the trip. The weather in the valley was very nice (a bit cold, but clear). The tone of the Fergana valley is quite different than the rest of the country. Khorezm and The Zerafshan river plain (samarqand) have grand old Imperial cities and giant features; vast deserts, wide rivers, giant mountains. The Fergana is much more low key. It's more agricultural, the peaks of the surrounding Tian Shan mountains loom in the far distance, but the valley is so gently sloped and large that it seems to be no valley at all, but a plain. The habitations consist of small towns and hamlets, with a few cities of moderate size scattered about (other than Tashkent, all Uzbek cities are of moderate size).
But, if the lands beyond the Kimchak constitute the heart of Historical Transoxania, the Fergana is the modern center of gravity of Uzbekistan. It is the most densely populated section of Central Asia. It contains the second and fourth largest cities of the country (Namangan and Andijan), and each of these cities has numerous outliers, unlike Samarqand and Bukhara, which pretty much stop in the desert.
We set out the second day in the valley to find the city of Chust, famed for its production of knives. The Fergana Valley is home to the most notable production of knives in Central asia, and each city has a distinct style. Chust is related to be the nicest, and the guidebook stated that there was a knife factory open to the public- a factory in the sense of "a collection of artisans" rather than a mass production facility.
Kinves are worn to ward off the evil eye, and the water used in knife grinding is supposed to be a curative for all manner of diseases.
We went down to the bazaar in Fergana, and caught a mashrutka to Margilan. Although Fergana is bigger than Margilan, Margilan is more of a transportation hub- its about 15 minutes ride from Fergana.
Once in Margilan we found the Depot where buses go to Namangan, along the north rim of the valley. We were there about 30 minutes before the bus departed, so we ducked around the corner to get a breakfast of Somsa on the street outside.
The guy that was making Somsa had no change, so instead of 400 sum ($0.30), we paid 500 sum ($0.38). We then returned to the bus. The fact, however, that we had overpaid the man 100 sum apparently bothered him, as about 10 minutes later, as we were sitting in the bus, he arrived with suitable compensation; an entire tree branch full of persimmons.
That's a lot of persimmons for eight cents. But, as I said before, most folks in Uzbekistan seem to be pathologically honest and generous to travellers. Except, of course, for Taxi drivers, who are ifrit-spawn the world over.
Getting to Namangan took about 3 hours; mostly because we stopped at numerous little villages. We passed through Rishdon, a great place to get ceramics that, unfortunately, we never got to stop in. But if you have the time I have heard that it is quite nice.
After arriving in Namangan, we had to wait for 35 minutes or so at the central bus station for transportation to Chust, which is not a terribly big place. That was alright. In the bus station itself are a number of tables with food and coffee available. The "last" table actually has very good coffee, the only time in U-Stan that I found a decent cup ' joe.
Good coffee and good company in the Namangan Bus Station
This is the lady to buy cakes from at the Bus Station
After the appropriate time, our bus arrived. The buses tend to be old and strange looking, but they are usually pretty reliable.
Uzbek intercity bus
We piled onto the bus, and began our trip to Chust. Just before we left Namangan, the bus stopped, as luck would have it, just in front of the Philology faculty of the University of Namangan, and our bus filled up with foreign language students, most of whom were (to my pleasant surprise) very good looking ladies.
It was obvious to everyone that we were foreigners, so the girls immediately began speaking to us in English, most of them being able to speak it quite well. This was one of three occasions where we found good speakers of english. They all stayed on the bus for the better part of an hour, then most departed at an outlying village.
One of them inquired if I was married. I pointed to the woman next to me and stated that this was my wife (I thought it pretty obvious, as she clearly isn't Uzbek). The lady sighed and expressed voluble dissapointment.
It's good to know the pimp hand isn't totally rusty.
Our travelling companions (marriage minded woman, second from right)
In addition to marriage proposals, we also recieved an invitation to dinner from an older woman who spoke nothing but Uzbek, and wanted us to meet her 13 grandchildren.
85 year old Uzbek lady- the good air keeps folks young
Also, we discovered that people take the "one eyebrow" thing very seriously, Perhaps I mentioned it before, but having one single eyebrow (what we call a "uni-brow) is considered the acme of female beauty. Women who do not have their eyebrows connected will pencil in the gap, as demosntrated below.
As we left the Namangan area, our bus, which was totally packed to the rafters, had a bit of a suspension problem. It lurched, then canted alarmingly to the left. Such small matters do not deter valiant Uzbek drivers, so we continued on driving tilted for another 5 minutes or so, despite the grinding and crunching sound coming from the rear left wheel (whose shocks had collapsed). After a bit, this added friction was too much for the engine to handle, along with the 70 or so people sardined inside, and it finally gave up the ghost, everyone then piling out onto the side of the road.
The men on the bus began immediately tinkering with the engine.
While the rest of the passengers (several dozen) gathered around us in a circle and began asking us all sorts of questions, translated by the two english speaking women who remained. After some time it became apparent that the bus was not going to reach Chust in a timely manner, so we began to climb, in groups, onto other buses (themselves already packed) that were heading for Chust.
We eventually reached the town center, and walked to the factory, which was permanently closed. Disapointment, as it had already taken most of the day to get here (one can really only visit one city a day in the Fergana, as transport, while fun, is not fast). So we went to the Bazaar, where we saw some nice melons.
Also in the bazaar we found a small forge and shop that turns out knives and various other edged tools (saws and axes). they forge the blades and heads from steel.
For the knives, the steel has a smoky "watered" look to it. Mohammad (the chief craftsman) claims it is "Damascus Steel"- made by the same method famed in Damascus and Toledo. I am not sure if it is done to the same intensity that the famous blades of the levant were, but it has the same look and weight.
Once the blade is formed, it is then sharpened and buffed to a nce sheen.
the Knife Making Crew
Muhammad is a real craftsman. The knives take quite some time to produce, and he had only a few examples around that were complete. One knife he refused to sell because of an imperfection in the blade that wasn't visible to me, but bothered him, it was destined for the scrap heap (how often would you encounter that sort of attitude in Western Europe or the US?). We bought two blades; one with a mother of pearl haft for about $18, and one with a polished horn haft for about $7. The distinguishing feature of Chust knives are their large and relatively unadorned haft (handle), most of the other Fergana valley knives have skinny hafts that are quite guady. I prefer this style.
This is not my picture, but here is a typical Chust knife:
After obtaining our knives, we wended our way back to the Mashrutka stand, passing the obligatory sheep in the town parrk;
By the time we returned to Fergana, it was dark, so we went back to our hotel, the Ziyorat (English speaking staff, best place in the valley to sleep, $12 doubles) and hit the sack.
MARGILAN
The next morning we returned to Margilan to do the principal thing we wanted to do in the Fergana Valley, visit the Yogdorlik silk factory.
Uzbekistan sits astride the old Silk road, and sericulture (the harvesting of silkworms) has been known since around 6,000 BC, when it was first developed in China. The Chinese attempted to keep the methods of sericulture secret, but the technology had arrived in Fergana by at least 300 AD. Currently Uzbekistan produces about 30,000 tons of silk per year, most of it in Margilan. The Yogdorlik factory was started in the 1980s by folks who wanted to maintain an alternative to Soviet style mechanization. Although the scale of the factory is large, they follow traditional spinning and dying procedures, and their silk is amongst the highest quality in the world. Uzbek silk is made in a style known as Ikat.
Silkworms, in this case the bombyx mori, eat mulberry leaves, wich are abundant in fergana, they thin spin a cocoon in preparation for turning into a moth.
early stage silkworm cocoons, they have not yet turned white or grown very large.
The cocoon consists of a single thread of silk, wich is slightly over one kilometer long. this is one of the factors that makes silk strong; in addition to the incredible tensile strength of silk, which exceeds steel, each "sheet" of silk is woven from extremely long monofilaments.
These cocoons are collected in sacks, and delivered to the factory.
Before the moth can emerge and break the silk thread, the cocoons are steamed in order to prepare them for unwinding. (Sorry vegans!)
In the ultra-traditional way (Yogdorlik has absolutely traditional as well as semi-mechanized spinning, although all dying and design is traditional) the thread is then teased out of each individual cocooon, and readied for spooling.
The silk is then spooled onto large reels, and this is used to weave the heavy "raw" looking silks used for many carpets, etc.
This is extremely slow, however, so Yogdorlik has large setups where the spooling is more industrially efficient.
Each thread is almost to small to see with the naked eye, but each of the cocoons bobbing in the hot water has a thread that loops over the plastic wheel, and three of these threads are eventually wound together into a larger thread.
Three of these larger threads are then wound together and spooled onto a small bobbin.
The bobbins are then taken to a spooling room, where three small bobbins are spooled onto a medium bobbin (winding the three threads together into a cable-like larger thread).
Eventually, the silk ends up on a very large bobbin, where it is ready to be marked, dyed, and woven.
The silk is formed into "cords"
And then is laid out on a frame, where a master designer marks and tapes off sections to be dyed.
Once marked, it is taken off the frame, and brought to the dye house.
Dyes are made from natural vegetable material,
As well as metal for the iron oxide colors:
The cords are essentially "tie-dyed", with wrappings being removed, then the cord put in a sack and submerged in the boiling dye.
Wrappings are re-arranged, and other colors added to the cord.
Then the cords are dried in ovens.
The cords are then transported to the looms, where they are cross woven with either toehr silk, for pure silk textiles, or occasionally with linen or (most often) cotton, for blends.
Uzbek teen hearthrob
In addition to Ikat silks like these, they also weave carpets from silk and wool, or silk and cotton. Carpets here are "persian" style rather than the more north african that I am used to.
The patterns are "embroidered" through a field of textile.
Students learning the carpet making process
and then they are shorn off to provide a level carpet surface. It can take up to a day to do one centimeter od a complex design. Even in U-Stan, these carpets are expensive ($500 and up). In New York, however, they can cost ten times that.
more than a few bandaged thumbs
They also embrodier the "suzane" table cloth type things.
The tour of the factory is free, and supposedly available in English- although that day they could not find the sole English speaker so the foreman, Sobirjon, lead us aroudn and gave us a Russian language tour.
At the end of the tour they have a shop. There is no pressure to buy and the prices are quite cheap. We got 4 ikats, a hat, and a couple of bolts of silk (18 feet long each) for less than $100. Not bad really.
Yogdorlik silk shop
The tour is designed, I think, less to sell than to show off the craft. Everyone there seemed genuinely proud of their work, was quite courteous, and its definitely photo-friendly. Be sure to bring lens cleaning cloths, as going from the cold to the steam can fog up your glass.
A few other shots of the silk factory:
posted by Justiceiro at 7:26 AM
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