Margilan silk: Yodgorlik factory, from cocoon to ikat

Silk begins with a silkworm spinning itself into a cocoon. In the Fergana Valley the worms feed on spring mulberry leaves and spin their cocoons between mid-April and mid-May. The factory does not raise worms itself: it buys cocoons by the ton.

The filament is held together by a natural gum, sericin, and hot water is what softens it. In the reeling room the cocoons float in basins while a worker finds the loose ends and draws them onto a reel. One filament is far too fine to weave on its own, so several are twisted together into a single thread.

This is the room to linger in. Everything that follows, from the colour to the pattern, depends on a thread that starts here, one cocoon at a time.

Reeled silk is wound into hanks and hung up by the machines. The thread meant for the warp, the lengthwise threads of the future cloth, then goes onto a large rotating frame and from there onto two rollers, which lay the threads side by side in exact order.

That order matters more here than in almost any other weaving. In Margilan ikat the pattern lives in the warp. Each thread will carry its own sequence of colours, and if one slips out of place, the pattern slips with it.

Much of the equipment in these rooms dates from Soviet times. The factory opened in 1972, worked as a state enterprise from 1982 to 1993 and was privatised in 2000, when it took the name Yodgorlik.

The local word for ikat is abr, Persian for “cloud”, and the craft of tying the pattern is abrbandi. Once the warp is stretched, the pattern is marked across the bundles of thread: where each colour begins and where it ends.

Then the bundles are tied. Thread is wound tightly around every section that must stay undyed, and the warp goes into the dye bath. The bound sections keep their colour. The ties are cut, other sections are bound, and the warp goes into the next colour. Every extra colour means another round of tying and dyeing; complex designs went through six to eight.

The motifs have old names worth asking about: anorcha, the little pomegranate; bodom, the almond; kuchkor shokhi, the ram’s horns; tarok, the comb. Ask your guide to find one on the warp before it is dyed. On the finished cloth you will recognise it at once.

The dye vats are heated over wood-fired stoves. Until the 1880s Central Asian dyers worked only with natural colours: indigo for blue, madder root and cochineal for reds and pinks, walnut and oak bark for browns, saffron and weld for yellows. Synthetic dyes then took over almost everywhere.

Yodgorlik returned to natural dyes in the 1990s. In 1996 four of its best workers went to India to train in natural dyeing, and the factory now uses the method widely; synthetic dyes are kept mainly for the cheaper machine-woven fabric. When you buy, ask which dyes went into the piece.

The same revival runs across town at the Margilan Crafts Development Centre, opened by the local community in 2007, where weaving and natural dyeing are taught master to apprentice. In 2017 UNESCO added its work on atlas and adras to the Register of Good Safeguarding Practices.

Only now does the weaving begin. The dyed warp is set up on a hand loom and the weft is passed across it. The threads were dyed in bundles and never line up perfectly, so the edge of every motif wavers a little. Central Asian weavers keep that blur on purpose, where other ikat traditions aim for crisp lines.

Two fabrics matter most. Khan-atlas is pure silk, dense and glossy, the cloth for celebrations. Adras has a silk warp and a cotton weft; the thicker cotton gives it a finely ribbed surface, and it is cheaper and easier to wash. Yodgorlik also weaves shoyi, a pure silk, the half-silk bekasam and jujuncha, and a plain cotton called boz.

About 6,000 metres of fabric leave the looms each month: 60% pure silk, 25% silk and cotton, 15% cotton. Of the 450 people who work here, 85 are weavers.

The carpet workshop is easy to miss and worth finding. A team of 26 knots silk carpets here, following a pattern chart hung above the loom. An ikat pattern is dyed into the warp before weaving; a carpet pattern is built during weaving, one knot at a time. Seeing both in one morning is the quickest way to understand the two logics of Uzbek textiles.

If you are thinking about a carpet, look at the work here first. Our guide to what to buy in Uzbekistan explains how to tell a hand-knotted carpet from a machine-made one and what customs will ask when you take it home.

The factory shop sells khan-atlas and adras by the metre, along with scarves, ready-made robes and chapans, and textiles for the home. Check two things before you pay.

First, turn the cloth over. In real ikat the pattern is dyed into the threads, so it shows on both sides; a print is pale on the back. Second, ask how it was made. Yodgorlik also has a mechanical workshop, and its fabric costs about a third less than hand-woven cloth. Both are honest products, but they are not the same thing.

Adras is the practical choice for something you will wear and wash. Khan-atlas is for a piece you will keep for special days. Every hand-dyed length is slightly different, so if you need several metres to match, buy them from the same roll.