From the Collection: Afghanistan - Uzbek Lakai Ilgitsh (Tent Hanging)

We have been moving furniture around due to the big remodel & one benefit is that we have another place to display bits of our textile collection.

This amazing piece of embroidery is a tent hanging from Northern Afghanistan, and as far as I can tell it's an ilgitsh, which is just a general term for a tent hanging.  The Lakai are an Uzbek tribe.  It's a bit unusual because though it is square, like many others I've seen online, the embroidery stops right where we've clipped it at the top for display (clipped it with clips, not with scissors!).  So it's folded & you cannot see the non-embroidered part, making it triangular shaped.

I like to include references (librarians just can't help it), so here's another example, much older, that I found online.  I've included a bunch of detail photos so you can see how wonderful it is and so you can see the artist's talented embroidery up close.  Of course this would be part of a bride's trousseau.

No, we haven't been to Afghanistan, unfortunately.  Not for lack of trying.  Mostly it was just a $$ thing; way too expensive--more bang for our buck going to West Africa & ride buses for 5 weeks, rather than 2 weeks on a tour in Afghanistan.  I don't have many regrets, but not getting to Peshawar when we were overseas makes me go, "Ouch!"  We have another amazing Afghan item--a wedding dress, I think it's Turcoman/Turkoman.  More on that later.

Anyway, enjoy these photos of Central Asian artwork.  Comments are always welcome & if you know more than I do, please write & correct me, or provide additional info.