The Silk Route. Approximately 6,437 km from China to Europe. 1,500 years of trade. Caravanserais carrying silk and spices, precious stones and porcelain, jade and glassware, even horses, the plague, and gunpowder. And in the centre of this world: Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva and Fergana valley. Here came Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Islam, and Communism. Here swept in nomadic and pastoral Turkic and Mongol tribes. Gengis Khan laid siege here, and out of this land came the brutal but brilliant Timur, the scholar Al Biruni, and the scientist Ibn Cena.
Ikat coats at Bukhara - A Journey on the Silk Route, at the National Crafts Museum | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
Photographs and garments at Bukhara - A Journey on the Silk Route | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
A woman’s ikat chapan from the 19th century. The jacket got its silky polish by being hammered with a wooden mallet and probably egg white | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
It is no wonder that the world has now woken up to the riches of present-day Uzbekistan. Two ongoing exhibitions in Paris — at the Louvre and the Institut du Monde Arabe — focus on its treasures. And inspired by them is a third. In India. Bukhara - A Journey on the Silk Route, at the National Crafts Museum in Delhi. However, unlike the other two, the body of the exhibit is taken from the personal archives of David and Mandeep Housego, the couple at the helm of Shades of India and focuses on the area’s nomadic legacy. Shades of India is aclothing and luxe home accessories brand known for its expertise with Indian craft and textile manipulation.
For the love of suzanis
The story begins in Afghanistan. In the early 1970s, David Housego, then a journalist with the Financial Times, was sent there on assignment. While wandering around the bazaars, his attention was drawn to a beautiful red hand-embroidered textile panel or suzani. It had large red circles and black rings on top. “I fell in love with it,” he says. “What first struck me was how contemporary they were. They had a sense of colour that I could relate to as abstract paintings.”
That suzani (Persian for needle), he later discovered, was a 19th century piece from Tashkent. It is part of the 40 pieces —16 suzanis, 14 rugs, six chapans or coats, and some jewellery and accessories — that comprise Bukhara. David had already been collecting tribal rugs during his time in Iran, prior to his purchase of the suzani from Afghanistan. But that piece started a lifelong interest in Central Asian work.
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