Uzbekistan · Weaving / Silk Textile
Шойи (Shoyi)
Shoyi (Шойи) is the plain Uzbek silk textile — the foundational silk fabric from which ikat and zardozi traditions develop, and important in its own right as the base cloth for embroidery and as a prestige fabric in plain form. Shoyi uses the same Fergana Valley silk as atlas ikat (CRAFT-0686) but woven without resist-dyeing — the defining challenge is the warp tension management for pure silk on silk: silk warp and silk weft have identical elasticity, unlike adras (CRAFT-0687). The defining technical knowledge is the weft beat calibration: 'the beater must tap, not strike — silk weft struck too hard compresses and loses luster.' Tap versus strike is the quality distinction.
Risk level: Endangered · Component of UNESCO Uzbek traditional silk weaving inscription (2017)
Suzani (Сузани — Persian: 'needle') is the large decorative embroidery panel that was the centerpiece of a Uzbek bride's trousseau — produced by the bride, her mother, and female relatives working simultaneously on separate panels of the…
Rishtan (Ришton) in the Fergana Valley is Uzbekistan's primary ceramics center — producing the blue-and-white glazed earthenware that is the visual signature of Uzbek decorative art.
Kigiz (Кигиз) is the Uzbek felt tradition — distinct from the Kyrgyz shyrdak (mosaic felt) and the Mongolian esgii (CRAFT-0605) in using a specific rolling technique with a chiy (reed mat) as the rolling base and a log or pole as the…
Samarkand paper (Самарқанд қоғози) was the finest paper in the medieval Islamic world — mentioned by Arab geographers as early as 751 CE following the Battle of Talas, when Chinese papermakers captured by Arab forces introduced the…
Khiva (Хива) in the Khorezm region is Uzbekistan's primary center of architectural wood carving — producing the elaborately carved wooden columns (ustun), doors (eshik), and ceiling panels that define the interiors of the UNESCO World…
Atlas (Атлас) is Uzbekistan's pure silk warp ikat — the most technically demanding of the three Uzbek ikat traditions, using a warp resist-dyeing system called abr (cloud) in which the silk warp threads are bound in a specific sequence…
The United States side of the cross-border Coast Salish weaving tradition (see CRAFT-1712 for the Canadian/British Columbia side), practiced by Coast Salish nations around Puget Sound and the wider Salish Sea in Washington State, using the…
The Cham people of Cambodia — Muslim descendants of the ancient Champa Kingdom — maintain a distinct textile tradition separate from both lowland Khmer hol (CRAFT-0506) and highland minority textiles.
The Baltic linen weaving tradition — the production of hand-woven linen textiles from the flax grown across all three Baltic States, whose specific Northern European flax (finer and stronger than Southern European linen) and the…
A backstrap-loom weaving tradition of the Amuzgo people, straddling the Guerrero–Oaxaca border, producing what specialist textile researchers regard as among the finest backstrap-woven brocade cloth in Mexico, distinguished by a…
The wet-felting of raw sheep's wool into the nabadi, a long, high-shouldered felt cloak worn for centuries by Georgian mountain shepherds (chaban) and other peoples across the Caucasus — a garment so densely and firmly felted that a…
The growing; retting; and weaving of linen from Minho-grown flax — one of the most complete textile production chains surviving in Portugal, closely related to the Galician liño galego tradition (CRAFT-1083) across the Minho river border.