Among Zoroastrian burial items, there is a camel-shaped zoomorphic OSTADON lying there. It was found…
The richness and diversity of traditional Uzbek costumes was memorialised in the journals of European merchants visiting oasis cities in the 19th century and exquisite photographs capturing the life of Central Asian people taken by foreign photographers travelling across the region: Polish officer of the tsarist army Leon Barszczewski (1849 – 1910) and Russian photographer Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky (1863 – 1944), as well as the fest Uzbek photographer Hudaibergen Divanov (1878 – 1938).
The collection of Uzbek garments housed by the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw contains a diverse group of silk ikat textiles, including two pieces dating to the late 19th century as well as outer garments hailing from the first and second half of the 20th century.
There was significantly more regional variety as regards female garments, yet they included similar basic elements: a long tunic, wide lozimi trousers, and an overcoat. Famed for elegant and opulent outfits, the female residents of Bukhara were called “the Parisiennes of the East” by the Europeans visiting the region in the late 19th century. To finish off their outfit and indicate the wearer’s social status, women would put on a variety of headgear: unmarried girls wore embroidered caps, while married women would sport a stiff lachak bonnet covered with a square scarf, which was either plain (in which case it was called rumol) or adorned with a flowery pattern (chorgul). The tunics (kurta) were monochrome or sewn from flowery fabrics, which arrived in the region from Russia.
Similarly, as in other Muslim countries of Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent, wide lozimi trousers were popular among both men and women. The women’s version was sewn from a few pieces of silk ikat or cotton and tightly pleated around the waistline. Stiffer types of lozimi made of velvet and adorned with zarduzi embroidery were closed with buttons.
While women could choose from a variety of overcoats, the most popular kinds included flared, body-skimming chapans with wide cut away skirts, such as kaltacha and slightly more figure-hugging edak, made of silk ikates featuring large decorative patterns made up of repeated motifs of anor (pomegranate) and bodom (almond), which were mainly worn in Bukhara and Samarkand. Young women would prefer more closely fitted munisak and mursak coats, cut away and pleated above the waist, sewn from ikat fabrics in intense colours or festive brocades with large lancé floral patterns.
More information about this can be found in the book-album "Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in the Museums of Poland" (volume XL) from the series "Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in the Collections of the World".
The general sponsor of the project is the oilfield service company Eriell-Group.
