At Rasuljon Mirzaahmedov's ikat worshop in Margilan, silkworm cocoons are boiled, causing them to unravel like spools of thread.
One of a Kind!
Silk ikat is an ethereal textile, which may be one reason its makers are called abr-band, or “cloud-tiers.” This scarf was purchased from a man named Rasuljon Mirzaahmedov, a ninth generation ikat-maker (or shall we say “cloud-tier”?) from the silk—mecca of Margilan. Rasuljon, who runs a workshop in a converted 19th century madrasah, also works with women from the surrounding villages. His ikat has been used in the collections of top international designers and constitutes some of the most beautiful examples of the art.
The Fergana Valley is famous for ikat weaving, which saw a big boom in Central Asia during the 19th century. The two kinds of ikat produced in Uzbekistan are adrasa and atlas; whereas atlas is p... Read More
The Fergana Valley is famous for ikat weaving, which saw a big boom in Central Asia during the 19th century. The two kinds of ikat produced in Uzbekistan are adrasa and atlas; whereas atlas is pure silk, adrasa has a silk warp (the vertical thread) and a cotton weft (the horizontal one). Like other patterned textiles, ikat uses a resist-dyeing technique that allows select regions to be dyed different colors. Unlike batik and tie-dye, however, ikat threads are dyed before being woven together; water-resistant bindings are tied around bundles of threads to prevent the dye from reaching those areas (thereby creating the pattern), and only then are the threads put on a loom. The result is a slight blurring along the boundary where colors meet—a neat, almost pixel-like effect that earned ikat the Persian name abr or “clouds.” Read Less
5.8 x 1.7 ftSilk
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