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.
Ceramics
From Afrasiyab bowls lettered in Kufic script to the glazed platters of Urgut’s potters, Samarkand ceramics span more than a thousand years.
© Xkmvch, CC0
The legacy of Afrasiyab
Ancient Samarkand — the mound of Afrasiyab — was one of Central Asia’s great ceramic centres in the 9th and 10th centuries. Under the Samanids its potters made elegant bowls and dishes coated in white slip and inscribed with aphorisms in dark Kufic lettering, now treasured by the Afrasiyab Museum and major collections worldwide. Their clay came from Konigil just outside the city, a deposit worked since antiquity and guarded by Samarkand’s rulers.
In the 14th and 15th centuries Timur gathered craftsmen from across his empire in Samarkand, potters among them, and ceramics moved onto buildings: the tiled and majolica-clad domes and portals of that era still define the city’s skyline.
The Bukhara–Samarkand school
Uzbek ceramics are grouped into the Fergana, Bukhara–Samarkand, Khorezm and Tashkent schools. The main centres of the Bukhara–Samarkand school are Samarkand, Urgut and Gijduvan, and its wares are recognisable by lead glazes in yellow-green and brown and by plant-based ornament; Urgut potters are especially fond of designs incised into the clay.
In 2023 ‘Ceramic arts in Uzbekistan’ was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Workshops in Samarkand and Urgut still throw platters, bowls, jugs and teapots on the wheel; you can buy them at the Urgut bazaar, in craft shops or straight from the potters.
Crafts
Crafts
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.
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.
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.
