Silks, Rags, and Blues

April 24, 2010

Silks, Rags, and Blues

This past week I have been in the Ferghana valley again, but this time with a group of students from our school. We travelled on a trip that has been called "Week Without Walls". All secondary students travel or do something outside the school walls for the week that allows them to better understand the country that we live in. We named our trip "Silks, Rags, and Blues."

I had arranged for our students to visit many of the artisans that the boys and I had visited last spring, but with the opportunity to interview them. Our same guide Davlat organized the trip, and fully prepped the artisans for our needs. Our interview focus was the concept of intergenerational artisans, who have been doing their craft in their families forever. The interviews were fascinating, and the students were amazed at the process of the crafts. The students worked with artisans who were hatmakers, block printers, potters, silk makers (marking patterns, dying, threading looms and weaving), and carpet makers. My group worked in the local Madrassah for two full days, with some of the visiting the artisans at home. We all got to dye silk scarves also! I have two beautiful scarves that I made myself.

Some new facts that I learned from the interviews:

It takes about 30 days to make 120 meters of Ikat silk material: from marking the pattern to the final weaving.
Carpet makers can do about 3mm of each carpet daily.
Our 86 year old block printer's works are not allowed out of the country as they are considered national treasures.
There are different types of scarves that men and women can wear.
Technically, mens' scarves should be woven by men.

The students were pretty amazing during the times with the artisans. They worked hard, asked great questions, and were excellent examples of how great inquiry based learning is. Watching them work with the artisans was even more amazing. The artisans are used to being watched from afar, and rarely have the chance to interact with young people from other countries. You could see that they really enjoyed the experience of sharing their crafts and letting our kids get their hands dirty - so to speak. The kids were focused the entire time, and were extremely proud of their final products. I look forward to seeing the students' final presentations as well on May 1st.

I took hundreds of pictures, but as the majority are of students, I cannot post most of them here, so I have chosen a few that just show some aspects of the trip.

Dyed silk strands drying on a tree. The white parts are covering a portion of the pattern to keep that color safe. The dying process is repeated several times.

This is the only picture I could put in of the silk scarves we made as in all the others were student faces. The boy hanging up the scarf was one of our translators. The kids bonded with him nicely, and he was able to miss school for the two days we were there to help us out.

The 86 year old block printer, whose works are considered national treasures.

Here he is again working with his son, who decided to take up the craft only at the age of 21 after realizing that if he didn't the art would disappear.