Samarkand paper
Creamy paper made by hand from mulberry bark and burnished with stone — the writing material of Islam’s golden age, revived in the village of Konigil.
Silk carpets
Hand-knotted carpets of naturally dyed silk — in Samarkand you can follow the whole journey from cocoon to finished rug in a single workshop.
© LBM1948, CC BY-SA 4.0
Silk of the Silk Road
Sericulture and silk weaving have flourished in the Zarafshan valley for centuries, and in 2022 the ‘Sericulture and traditional production of silk for weaving’ of Uzbekistan and several neighbouring countries was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Carpet weaving is still a living trade in the region: Urgut has several carpet works, and Samarkand and Bukhara are counted among the country’s main carpet centres.
The workshop on Hujum Street
Samarkand’s best-known carpet workshop is Samarkand Bukhara Silk Carpets on Hujum Street, a short walk from Shah-i-Zinda and the Bibi-Khanym Mosque, often simply called the Hujum factory. It is run by the Badghisi family, Turkmen carpet weavers by descent, who moved to Afghanistan in Soviet times and returned to Uzbekistan in the early 1990s. Most of the weavers are women; together with embroiderers working from home, the workforce numbers more than 400.
Visitors can follow every stage: reeling thread from cocoons, dyeing it with madder root, walnut husks, onion skins and pomegranate peel, and knotting it on the loom. Designs draw on Turkmen, Persian and local traditions. The showroom also displays felts and suzanis alongside the carpets, and there is no pressure to buy.
Crafts
Crafts
Suzani and embroidery
Bold red and black rosettes on a white ground — the Samarkand suzani; alongside it, Urgut’s embroidered skullcaps and the work of today’s needlewomen.
Ceramics
From Afrasiyab bowls lettered in Kufic script to the glazed platters of Urgut’s potters, Samarkand ceramics span more than a thousand years.
Woodcarving
From the patterned doors of Gur-e-Amir and Rukhobod to the pillars of neighbourhood houses, Samarkand’s carvers have cut geometry and arabesque into wood for centuries.
Ganch carving
Snow-white patterns carved in ganch, a mix of gypsum and clay, and the gilded kundal of Tilya-Kori — the inner world of Samarkand’s monuments.
Tiles and majolica
The carved glazed terracotta of Shah-i-Zinda, the mosaics of the Registan portals and the tiles of Gur-e-Amir’s dome — the craft behind Samarkand’s famous blue.
