Samarkand carpets
Some things can convey a person's inner world. For artists, these are paintings, for designers they are fabrics and clothes, and for Abdulahad Badghisi of Samarkand silk carpets factory, they are carpets. Sabina Odinaeva sat down for a heart-to-heart chat with the master carpetmaker.
The history of carpet weaving in the Badghisi family goes back 200 years, to the city of Mari in Turkmenistan. It is a skill spanning six generations, and one that the family carries on today.
“My father, Mohammad Ewaz Badghisi, was a native of Turkmenistan and loved travelling,” he tells me. “First, he stayed in Samarkand, then in Kabul in Afghanistan, where he continued the family business. He also was in Philadelphia for three or four years with my sister and my mother by invitation of the University of Pennsylvania. He taught students there the art of carpet weaving. Afterwards, they returned to Kabul. In 1992, after Uzbekistan gained its independence, it began attracting investors to the country, including my father. He decided to invest in carpet weaving in Samarkand.”
Today, more than 450 employees work at Samarkand silk carpets factory. Most are hired at the age of 18 after they finish school. They first undertake special training through work exchange, at the end of which they receive a certificate – a system not unlike an apprenticeship. Patience is an important characteristic for a weaver, and those who do not meet the requirement are offered other roles at the factory, such as dyeing, rinsing and so on.
Badghisi says his family is not just making carpets, they are reviving a lost art.
“What distinguishes our carpets is the fact that they are created exclusively from natural materials. The threads are made from mulberry silkworms and coloured with vegetable dyes. We use madder root, yellow asparagus flower, walnut peel, saffron, fruit skins and other plants. Colour plays the most important role in the creation of a silk carpet. After that, there is the design, size, and so on,” he explains.
Badghisi says another important part of creating carpets is employee satisfaction – their mood is crafted into the final product. A happy worker makes fewer mistakes and you can see happiness in the pattern work on a carpet. Essentially, the happier the weaver, the more beautiful the carpets.
“We give each master the right to choose how to make their carpets. Almost anyone can make a simple design, but if the pattern is more difficult, then the weaver’s skills have to match. Depending on the complexity of a carpet, their payment structure changes as well. We don't pay them by the days they work or by the hours, we pay them by the numbers of knots in every square centimetre.”
The time it takes to create a carpet depends on the size and the number of knots per square centimetre. A two-square-metre carpet with simple patterns takes 5–6 months to complete, but if there are more knots per square centimetre, it can take a year and a half or even longer.
“We don't make bad carpets. But sometimes someone will point out a spot where the pattern has been done incorrectly. We always emphasise that these are handmade carpets, and small inconsistencies like that make each one unique. Just like nobody is perfect, sometimes a weaver makes a small mistake and that becomes a beautiful element.”
Samarkand silk carpets factory’s products are available at two locations in Samarkand: a showroom in the Registan and at the Samarkand Bukhara Silk Carpet Workshop. In 2019, the factory also welcomed more than 1000 visitors a day for workshops on-site (by appointment).
“We are very happy to have visitors. It is very important for us that every guest can experience our products and get to know our culture. We want people to be able to see what we can do and what kind of carpets we can create. Here we create an atmosphere of cosiness and warmth, telling jokes and sharing interesting Uzbek stories. This atmosphere makes them.
