A Report by Pam Engberg
The ITD Artisans' Exchange program was the proposal of Elaine Ulman, a program
facilitator for Amherst's Institute for Trade and Development. During prior group visits by Uzbek community leaders, Elaine noticed that there were no female delegates. Interested in
providing opportunities for women to share in these experiences, she turned to the area of textile arts as a possible area of
participation.
ITD eventually connected with Christopher Alexander, formerly managing director of the Silk Carpet Workshop in Khiva. Founded in 2002 by UNESCO and assisted in its development by Operation Mercy (an NGO operating many community development programs worldwide), the Silk Carpet Workshop and its associated Suzanni Embroidery Workshop are reviving traditional textile arts, while providing meaningful employment for residents of Khiva. Now assisted by Operation Mercy volunteers Aina Graff and Michelle and Andrew Varley, the workshops were willing to participate in an exchange and asked for participants from the U.S. with expertise in natural dyeing, dye plant horticulture, design, weaving, and embroidery. The director of the Khivan museum complex also requested curatorial expertise. Six American participants were chosen to accompany Elaine to Uzbekistan: Michelle Wipplinger as dyer, Elizabeth Merrill as horticulturalist, Marjorie Puryear as designer, Madelyn Shaw as curator, Edward Maeder as embroiderer, and Pam Engberg as weaver. Most of the group had more than one skill, so we all contributed in several areas.
As the "designated weaver", I had two specific assignments: to work with the floor loom weavers assigned to the suzanni workshop, and to teach backstrap weaving to some of the embroidery staff.
The weavers normally produce adras, which is a cotton or cotton/silk plain weave cloth used as foundation by the embroiderers. Their warps are a single-ply, energized cotton, about as fine as 20/2 cotton, and are made into warp chains 100 meters long, and about 20 inches wide. For certain formal pieces, the weavers wanted to be able to produce a weft-faced twill; using silk as weft, they would be able to obtain a darker, more lustrous red surface for the embroidery. In order to do this, we looked at various ways that the looms could be converted to 4 shafts, and also discussed the other possibilities available with 4-shaft looms.
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You will note that the warp is not wrapped around the warp beam, but carried up over the loom. This is a modification that Farkhad made when the loom was moved to a small room. In Uzbekistan, with its strong tradition of silk weaving, warps are usually stretched out behind the loom and the warp chain is weighted over a hook or bar (see below). Even tension depends upon the bundling point being a good distance from the fell. Farkhad was able to overcome this by adding two tensioning bars (like lease sticks) and bringing the warp back toward the front. You can see by the fabric on the loom how successful this was!
After the group left Khiva, it spent a few days in Bukhara, where a "Silk and Spice" festival brought textiles from all over Uzbekistan. In addition to silks - ikat silks, iridescent silks, striped silks, silk carpets - we found felt carpets, wool carpets (pile and flat weaves), and complex warp- and weft-faced wool fabrics done in various finger-manipulated weaves. I also spent an afternoon with Goulom Fattoev, a young entrepreneur and carpet designer, who explained the workings of the vertical, fixed-heddle Tabriz style carpet loom.
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And everywhere was inspiration - on the minarets of Khiva, the brickwork of Bukhara, and the mausoleums of
Samarkhand. Uzbekistan is a textile artist's dream.
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