Two Stops Past Siberia

Whoa! These guys are the real deal. The little bath-matt looking things below are quaint, right? They come so much bigger. They are produced mainly for home use, and otherwise sold primarily to tourists. Tough to ship, but boy, aren’t they gorgeous.

These bigger ones come in different ways. Some, as you can see in those rolled up ones in back, are made in tiles, and then sewn together. Others are just one gigantic piece. A recurring theme the astute among you will notice is the inverse symmetrical designs. The patterns are made by folding up paper and cutting it (like we make snowflakes) and then tracing it on to the felt. The one piece is used for one side, and then the negative space makes up the other side.

The picture with the ladies is one of the handicraft cooperatives I work with in a town called Birlik or Solidarity. The one with the single lady and all those rugs is from a cooperative in a town called Dostuk or  “Friendship,” and that picture was taken at a huge handicraft festival in Astana, Kasakhstan.

Then, on top of all of this, is the wonderful symbology. All of those little squigglies inside, most of them symettrical, they all mean something. A lot of it, I think, is design sense. Sometimes there is discussion over what exactly each symbol means. Rest assured however, someone will tell you each piece means something.

That first sucker there sports a black and white triangle border. Those triangles are special though: their edges are smooth. That means they aren’t just mountains, but mountains without snow. In that next image, we get to see those same mountains, but with vaguely serrated edges. That means these feature snow. In the third image, we’ve got two pieces of note. The first is the border. Instead of triangles, we get rectangles. These are the handles, or “ears” of the giant metal pots we use out here called “kazans.” Photo number four is a party. The little red men in each of the cardinal directions are people, and the green cross in the center is the table cloth, or dostarkon that they are sitting around. And in picture number 5? Those are eagles!