Silk and Clay

We made several amazing stops on our way out of Ferghana and back to Tashkent. Like our previous visit to the 8th century paper mill in Samarkand, these visits were about living history and artisan survival in the 21st century. There is a down side to practicing ancient techniques. They are labor intensive and not financially rewarding. Basically, I wasn't happy to see people who have worked boiling silk worms to death for the past 30 years. This is not a pro silk worm manifesto, I just felt bad for the crafts people who did such grueling work daily. I was also not pleased to see very young young people apprenticing in these trades. I won't go into a "how to" on silk production. I think Stan Sherer and Marjorie Senechal have already written a book or two about it.

These ladies are boiling the silk worms and extracting the silk from the cocoons.
From what I understood, this is the only "traditionally produced" silk factory in Central Asia.
This man is making (or doing) ikat, a kind of tying and dyeing of the silk.
Here's a young person weaving the ikat threads.
Every release of the shutter is an affirmation-- yes, yes, yes (Henri Cartier-Bresson paraphrase). Each camera exposure is an acknowledgement of the present moment. It seems to be cheating to embrace the present moment for the extended period of a print or a blog. And to have each shutter release lead to the next.

Here's a market picture from the Tashkent Old City while I go to meet the US Ambassador to Uzbekistan.

Ambassador Richard Norland is a personable guy who asked me to encourage you to come and visit. I don't think he'll put you up at the Dedeman Hotel, but you can easily ride the elevator.
Now for ceramic arts. This series is for Chuck and Patty. I know I don't have to say much about clay production, so here's some studio pictures from Uzbekistan's greatest living potter.

As I was looking at the beautiful patterns on the plates, I was reminded of my favorite Uzbek popular art form-- bread making. OK, so I haven't had much to eat for the past 10 hours. I do have a squeeze bottle of mayonez (Uzbek spelling) resting on the hotel air conditioner. I think I'll take it with me to market to get a bread snack.