The Khorezm art of ornamental
painting
The Khorezm skull-caps (tahhiya)
have a festive look, but do not feature embroidery.
The specific features of the Khorezm skull-caps lie
in its flat bottom and wide thin border decorated
with a braid. The most plain and strict skull-caps
for men are mainly made of the dark velvet. The skull-caps
for men and women have the common form, but skull-caps
for women are made of expensive fabrics and decorated
with small details.
In the 1920s the skull-caps evolved with wide braid
along the whole width of the thin border and with
long fringe (about 14 cm) sewed on the back of the
skull-cap. In the 1930s these were replaced by the
more compact style with short pompon of silk thread
and a tiny wooden talisman hung on the silk thread
from the thin border over the middle of the forehead.
Khorezm skull-caps are also decorated with a row of
silver coins.
In the twentieth century one-color skullcaps of the
dark velvet were widespread. They were decorated with
small beads of a glass and colored copper. Despite
the use of the light beads and metal beads these skull-caps
reflect the common artistic style of the decorative-applied
art of Khorezm.
The art of ornamental painting in Khorezm and Khiva
is also unique. Masters of this art employed it in
a variety of crafts and trades. Many of them were
famous not only as ornamental artists but also as
historians, musicians and poets. Such Khiva masters
as usto R. Karimbergan and usto I. Matpanov were professional
singers and musicians.
During the period of economic flourishing the ornamental-artists
were leading masters in the field of architectural
and applied arts, and the main job they did was painting
and designing for wood-carvers and stonecutters. They
were versatile in their skills, and could produce
in another medium when they had no commissions in
their primary medium. For example, Janibekov, Seidniyazov,
Khndaiberganov and others were engravers and copper
and stone carvers, as well as painters.
Usto Balta Mirzaev was a particularly well-known master.
In the 1920s he fulfilled private orders and was engaged
in various jobs - making designs for carvers and cutters,
and for printed clothes. Usto Balta Mirzaev took part
in the restoration of the ceiling of the Kunya-Krik.
He also fulfilled fifteen commissions for designs
for painters, and his work is in the State Museum
of Art of the Republic of Uzbekistan.
Usto Balta Mirzaev's son won fame like gifted artist-ornamentalist
Abdulla Baltaev. The masters of architectural painting
and wood carvers used his designs for architectural
details and artistic items. In fact, there is even
a collection of wall painting «spaceman»
which were based upon his drawings. All the artistic
decorations of the Khiva Hall, cut plaster panels,
woodcarvings, marble cuttings, and ceiling arrangements
in the State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre were
also constructed on the basis of Abdulla Baltaev's
drawings.
B. Abdullaev was also a famous Khiva master of carving
who painted household items. For example, one chest,
designed and built by him was so popular that almost
every family in Khiva had their chest made by him.
A resource for his painting was the drawings from
the Tash-khaul and other Khiva monuments of the nineteenth
century, which the master put together in the chest
painting patterns. The yellow and red color gamut
of painted household items of B. Abdullaev is different
from the general artistic style of the Khiva decorative
and applied arts.
A special branch of artistic trade created the manuscript
books, a tradition of many years standing. By the
twelfth to thirteenth centuries, the bog manuscript
collections were kept in the libraries of Qurgani.
In the fourteenth century there was a calligraphic
school in the court of Khorezm. Here, one can find
the Shan-name by Firdausi; copied for the Khiva khan
Is-Muhhamad in 1556. Later, 115 miniatures for this
book were completed by the gifted Samarkand artist
Muhammad Murad Samarkandi, at the Institute of Oriental
Studies of the Academy of the Republic of Uzbekistan.
The rulers of Khiva appreciated the manuscript books.
There were arranged skillfully by the artists and
calligraphers. Thus, the Khiva khan, Abdulghazi-khan,
was proud of, and valued his collection of priceless
historical manuscripts. Among the artifacts are pots,
sometimes with handles and decorated with lion heads;
ceramic containers for vine; churns decorated with
fanciful images; fragments of clay sculptures, including
female and male ter-ra-cotta statuettes, square and
round ossuaries (ceramic coffins) adorned with life-size
or half-size sitting figures.
The most ancient Khorezmian inscriptions, dating from
(the third and beginning of the second centuries B.C.)
was made in Indian ink in aramey letters.
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