Traditional Crafts of Uzbekistan: Which Town Makes What, and Where to Watch

Rishtan, in the Fergana Valley, has made pottery since at least the 9th century. It owes its craft to two materials. The first is the red clay that lies right under the town and can be used almost without refining. The second is ishkor, a glaze made with the ash of desert plants, which gives Rishtan ware its deep turquoise and blue. The town has around a thousand potters, about a hundred of them from hereditary families, and a museum of traditional pottery opened during the town's international pottery forum.

In a good workshop you will see the whole cycle: the wheel, the white base coat, the painting by hand, the glaze and the kiln. Ask to see the kiln, not only the shop. More on the patterns and how to buy is in our article on Rishtan ceramics.

An hour from Bukhara, Gijduvan has its own school of ceramics, and after Rishtan you will recognise it at once: instead of blue, brown, ochre, yellow and green, with flowers and geometric patterns. The best-known workshop belongs to the Narzullaev family, potters for six generations, who opened a ceramics museum at their workshop in 1992. In its cases you can follow how the style changed, and after one visit you will never confuse a Gijduvan plate with a Rishtan one.

From Bukhara we organise a half-day trip to a Gijduvan ceramics workshop with lunch, and the town itself is covered in our guide to day trips around Bukhara.

Margilan is the silk town of the Fergana Valley. Here you can watch the full path of silk: cocoons in hot water, reeling the thread, dyeing it, and weaving. The famous fabrics are atlas, all silk, and adras, with a silk warp and a cotton weft. Both are ikat: the pattern is tied and dyed into the threads before weaving, so the weaver has to know in advance where every patch of colour will fall. The threads shift slightly on the loom, which is why the edges of the pattern look soft and blurred. That blur is the signature of the technique.

The Yodgorlik factory, founded in 1972, is the easiest place to see it, and in 2017 UNESCO added the Margilan Crafts Development Centre for atlas and adras to its register of good safeguarding practices. Our article on Margilan silk and the Yodgorlik factory follows the process step by step.

The word suzani comes from the Persian for needle. A suzani is a large embroidered cloth, traditionally part of a bride's dowry, often stitched in strips by several women and then sewn together, which is why the pattern sometimes does not quite meet at the seams. Each region had its own style: Bukhara, Nurata with its soft colours, Samarkand, and Shahrisabz with the fine iroqi stitch that won the town its World Craft City title in August 2026.

For old and new pieces side by side, go to the bazaar in Urgut near Samarkand, where the textile rows are fullest on Sundays and Wednesdays. How to choose a suzani, and what the motifs mean, is in our guide to suzani embroidery.

For centuries Samarkand paper was prized across the Muslim world. The method was lost in the 19th century and revived in the 1990s: in 1996 the Mukhtarov brothers founded the Meros paper mill in the village of Konigil, a short drive from the city. Bark from young mulberry branches is boiled, beaten by a mill turned by a water wheel, formed into sheets and polished with a stone until it shines. It is one of the most peaceful hours you can spend near Samarkand. Details are in our article on Samarkand paper and the Konigil mill.

Khiva is the town of carved wood. The Juma Mosque in Itchan Kala stands on 212 wooden columns, some of them taken from older buildings, and carvers in the old town still make doors and columns by hand. In the Fergana Valley, Kokand holds the World Craft City title for woodcarving.

Steel belongs to Chust, in the Namangan region, famous for its knives with decorated blades and handles. Bukhara has two crafts of its own: metal chasing, which you can watch in the workshops around the trading domes, and gold embroidery on velvet, once made for the emir's court and now for robes, caps and panels. All of these make good gifts; our list of what to buy in Uzbekistan has the details.

Hand-knotted carpets are woven today in Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand and Margilan, in wool and in silk, many with natural dyes. Look at the back: on a hand-knotted carpet the pattern shows through clearly, knot by knot, and slight irregularities are normal. The fringe should be the end of the warp threads, not a strip sewn on afterwards. In a workshop you can watch the weavers follow a pattern chart one knot at a time, which explains the price better than any certificate.