Scroll over an image for details.
First and foremost, start with tea. Continue with tea. Finish with tea. In Ferghana Valley the preference is for green tea imported from China and you will never, never find any artisan very far from their teacup.
The short season and labour intensive nature of sericulture make it particularly well-adapted to home industry. Turkestan is one of the world’s main areas of silk production and most of the cocoon rearing is carried out at home in the villages. The cocoons, when finished, are put into the sun to dry and kill the moth inside. They are cleaned and taken for sale to an official collection point where they are weighed and sorted.
The first step in processing the silk is to place handfuls of cocoons in a cauldron of boiling water, heated over a fire of rice husks, camel dung and stripped mulberry branches. The cocoons are stirred with a wooden spoon until the filaments start to loosen. The reeler, who must be someone of high skill due to the sensitivity of the task, will pull together the filaments of around 20 cocoons (the exact number will depend on the desired thickness of the thread and can be from 4 to 25).
The thread is wound onto a bobbin by an assistant - the Charkhtob, “he who rotates the wheel” - using pulleys and a giant wheel, called the devcharkh; dev being a fabled giant of great strength.
The silk is then wound onto drums where it’s left to dry, and during this process any last remnants of twigs or waste are removed from the silk.
Once dried, the thread is removed from the drum and tied into bundles. It is still stiff as the gum of the silk worm has not yet been totally removed. At this point, the thread may be boiled again and bleached. Bleached thread will give a more brilliant final colour when dyed and woven. The silk is further spun onto spools.
Damaged cocoons and the imperfect sections of the filament are sorted during this process. Mixed with a paste of water and flour to give them stiffness and make it easy to spin them, they will be dyed and used for weaving raw-silk material (see our Waste Silk Scarves!), as embroidery thread, or woven into rugs.
The silk thread is next wound from several spools of silk thread onto a huge, spinning drum of 6.75m circumference in an extremely labour intensive process, usually completed by machine. This begins the process of stretching out the threads to their full length, which could be up to 200m. This process also allows the thread to be measured out to exact lengths prior to it going to the abr-bandi (ikat weaving) workshop.
At the abr-bandi workshop, the threads are measured out and separated into bundles called livits. There are around 40-60 livits per piece of yardage woven, and the livit length is equal to the length of the pattern (usually around 2-2.2m). The thread will be tied and dyed like this, and once the weaving takes place, the livits will be opened and the pattern will repeat every 2 - 2.2m. Each end of the livits are tied to metal poles which are held in place by ropes connected to the floor.
The Master Weaver is responsible for determining or creating the ikat design. Many designs are based on traditional motifs, such as animals, though designs have become highly abstract. Colour and motif isn’t particularly tied to region or era; designs changed according to fashion. That said, certain Master Weavers tend to repeat certain motifs or patterns and ikats can be identified in this way as their work.
And here starts the first step in actually dyeing the thread. Based on the Master Weaver’s design, one craftsmen will mark out the first part of the design to be dyed. He will use a water soluble ink; like soot (taken from the base of a kettle, for example!) mixed with water and mark the thread directly.
Another alternative to marking the threads directly is marking out the design on plastic and punching small holes through which water soluble ink will be applied to the thread. Either way, the artisan must mark the threads to indicate to the binder where is to be bound and where is to be left open for the first dye bath.
Once the marks have been made onto the livits - the thread bundles - the design will look something like this. As you can see, it’s totally abstract and takes a lot of skill to turn the ikat design drawn on a piece of paper into thread bundles ready for dying. Often the spread of thread represents one half side of the ikat fabric. The pattern is a mirror image on the other side and so these threads can be flipped over the central axis and used to weave the other half of the yardage.
The binding of the thread used to be made using cotton thread, but plastic cellophane tape is now the material of choice. The process of binding - to my great surprise - is also carried out on machines today. A long machine, with hooks to hold the livit tight at both ends, will spin the thread bundle around. The binder has to note the beginning and end of each covered section of the thread, and then as the thread bundle is spun, he covers each area tightly with the plastic tape.
Before the introduction of synthetic dyes by the Russians in the late 19th century, dye colours were limited to those which could be produced naturally. During the Soviet era especially, when efficiency was king, the use of natural dyes and handmade processes was almost entirely phased out. These days, thankfully, some of the master weavers have returned to using natural dyes, though most ikat is woven using a mixture of natural and synthetic dyes.
Once the threads have been tied and the dye bath has been prepared and heated over a wood fire, the livits are loosely tied to metal rods and immersed in the bath until the desired colour is acheived.
This dyeing and binding process is extremely complicated; for multi-coloured ikat, reds and yellows tend to be applied first in hot baths. Traditionally, the Tajik community would dye those colours requiring hot baths, and indigo, which is dyed in a cold bath, would be applied in a separate dye house, usually run by Jewish dyers or Chala Muslims (converted Jews).
The dyed threads are then rinsed and twisted to ring out the remaining water. They are then left to dry before the next step of unbinding the livits.
Once the bundles of threads have dried, they’re tied once more to the iron rods secured in the ground to pull the thread tight. From the beginning of this process, the thread bundles - livits, as they’re known - must be kept in the same order until they’re loaded onto the loom. If one livit is put out of place, the ikat pattern will be broken.
Here a close up of the livits. The yellow parts of the planned pattern have been dyed - you can see them under some of the bound and taped sections. The red has just been dyed and next comes the blue. The blue will be dyed on white to create the blue parts of the pattern, on top of some red sections to create a dark brownish/black colour, and on top of some of the yellow sections to create green. For every single colour, the design has to be drawn, the thread tied and dyed, and untied.
The artisan responsible for transforming the paper pattern into actual, woven cloth again marks the livits to show the binders which sections need to be untied and which sections tied for the next dye bath, which will be blue.
For a novice like me, it’s impossible to imagine how the design will look on the finished fabric. The livits you see here will be dyed in several more rounds of various colours until they are woven and finish this part of their story as the fabric in the next image.
The thread bundles, in the process of being tied and dyed, and the finished cloth. It’s no wonder that some cultures believe ikat is imbued with magical properties due to the time and skill involved in creating it.
Once the lengthy and complex process of binding and dyeing is complete, the threads are cut into shorter lengths ready for weaving and tied into a chain; one bundle connected to the next. This ensures that the threads stay in order while they are being loaded onto the loom and the pattern can be repeated correctly.
Central Asia ikats are warp-dyed, so the loom is loaded with the dyed threads; the weft thread (the thread in the shuttle which passes from right to left) will be a plain colour and made from silk or cotton. White and black weft thread is common, but some masters use other colours, such as pink, to give a rosy hue to the final textile.
The threads are loaded onto a simple treadle loom, where 2-4 peddles are manipulated by the weaver to adjust the warp. Unlike other hand woven fabrics, where the complexity of the weave depends upon the skill of the weaver, the weaving of Central Asian ikats is relatively simple. The main role of the weaver is to ensure the correct tension and watch for any broken threads. If a thread is broken, the weaver must immediately knot it back together to ensure the pattern is not broken.
Once the textile weaving has been completed, it is ironed. In Margilan, the Yodgurlik silk factory has 2 units of old Soviet steam rollers, and the master weavers of the city rent these rollers to get a consistent ironing of their hundreds of meters of yardage.
The final step is this truly incredible process is one of quality control - checking each inch of yardage to ensure no serious defects are there, and to trim any loose threads.
Much of the ikat produced will end up in local markets. Ikat is still popular in Central Asia, and especially sought after by brides to be, as multiple ikat dresses are required during the marriage ceremony and events.
Be aware though! Most of the ikat found in the local markets is not produced according to this lengthy process. While the binding and dyeing is always done by hand, most ikat is now woven on machine or power looms. Buying directly from one of the few remaining master weavers ensures that your ikat is produced purely by hand. And we think that’s the only way it should be done!