Credited to Uzbekistan. Ikat techniques exist in many cultures and Central Asian ikat is shared with Tajik weavers; Uzbekistan's tie is as the leading historic center.
How it began
UNESCO dates ikat making in the territory of present-day Uzbekistan to the Late Antique period and names Margilan, in the Fergana Valley, as the historic center for atlas and adras cloth. How the technique first arrived is not settled. One account holds that it probably reached the Silk Road cities by way of India.
The local form is called abrbandi, usually translated as cloud tying. It reached its peak in the 19th century, when Bukhara was another major center and ikat silks were made into coats, hats and wall hangings. In Bukhara the work was divided among communities: Bukharan Jews handled indigo, Tajiks mainly dyed reds and yellows, and Uzbeks did the weaving.
How it works
In ikat the pattern is dyed into the yarn before any cloth is woven. The undyed warp threads are laid out in parallel bundles, and sections are wrapped tightly to keep dye out. The bundle goes into a dye bath, where only the exposed sections take color. Binding, dyeing and unbinding are repeated for each color. When the threads are set on the loom and woven, the pattern appears.
The wraps never seal perfectly, and dye creeps under their edges. That gives ikat its soft, blurred outlines, which are valued as its hallmark. Atlas is the all-silk cloth and adras is woven from silk and cotton. Natural dyes such as cochineal, lac and larkspur were largely pushed out by synthetic colorants from the 19th century on.
Where it stands today
Handmade production was disrupted during the Soviet period, and some techniques came close to being lost. In 2007 the local community set up the Margilan Crafts Development Centre in a restored madrasa to teach ikat weaving, natural dyeing and related crafts. Its masters include Rasuljon Mirzaakhmedov, a ninth-generation craftsman who received a UNESCO Seal of Excellence in 2005 for reviving a Bukhara silk-velvet ikat design.
UNESCO added the center to its Register of Good Safeguarding Practices in 2017. More than 500 masters in Margilan weave adras and other ikat cloth, with about 3,000 family members and apprentices assisting. The center gives practical training to about 100 young people a year through a local crafts college.
