I used to think chestnuts were just those things you roasted at Christmas markets.
Turns out, in the walnut forests of southern Uzbekistan—places like the Chatkal and Zaamin ranges, stretching across maybe 50,000 hectares, give or take—craftspeople have been turning wild chestnuts into intricate art for centuries, possibly longer. The tradition isn’t well-documented, honestly, because Soviet-era records focused on timber exports rather than folk crafts, but elders in villages near Bostanliq and Angren still remeber techniques passed down through at least four or five generations. These aren’t the sweet chestnuts Europeans know; they’re smaller, harder Castanea sativa variants mixed with local wild species that adapted to Central Asian winters. The shells come out darker, almost mahogany when polished. Craftspeople—usually women working in family workshops—carve them into jewelry boxes, prayer bead cases, miniature figurines of animals. The detail can be absurd: I’ve seen a chestnut shell no bigger than a walnut carved with geometric patterns so fine you’d need a magnifier to count the lines.
Here’s the thing: the craft nearly disappeared in the 1990s. Economic collapse meant younger people migrated to Tashkent or further, and forests faced illegal logging pressure. Only a handful of artisans kept working, selling pieces at Chorsu Bazaar for barely enough to cover materials.
When Foresters Started Paying Attention to What Grandmothers Were Already Doing in the Kitchens
Around 2005, conservation groups noticed something strange. Villages with active chestnut crafters had lower deforestation rates—not dramatically lower, maybe 15-20% less tree loss compared to nearby areas, but measurable. Wait—maybe it sounds obvious now, but at the time forestry programs were all about top-down patrols and fines. Turns out, when families earn income from sustainable nut harvests, they police the forests themselves. A project called “Crafts for Conservation,” run by a coalition including the Uzbek Society for the Protection of Birds and something called the Mountain Societies Development Support Programme, started training new artisans in seven villages. They taught not just carving but also how to identify mature nuts, sustainable collection times (late September through October, after the first frost), and marketing. By 2012, roughly 200 artisans were registered, about 70% women.
The economic impact stayed modest—most families made an extra $300-500 annually, not life-changing but enough to keep kids in school longer. The real shift was cultural. Younger people started viewing forest work as skilled labor instead of peasant drudgery.
Why Chestnut Art Looks Nothing Like What You’d Expect from “Traditional Craft”
If you’re imagining rustic, primitive carvings, you’d be wrong. Modern Uzbek chestnut art blends Islamic geometric patterns with Soviet-era realism and, weirdly, some Art Nouveau influences that came through Russian settlers in the 1920s. One artisan in Parkent, a woman named Malika Jumaeva—I met her briefly in 2019—carves chestnut shells into tiny portraits. She uses dental tools, the kind dentists discarded, which she buys from a medical surplus dealer in Tashkent. Her work sells to collectors in Europe for $80-150 per piece. She’s trained maybe a dozen apprentices, but only three stuck with it because the eye strain is brutal. You’re working with material that’s rock-hard, unforgiving—one slip and hours of work are ruined. Also, chestnuts vary wildly in quality; maybe one in five shells has the right density and color for fine carving.
The designs themselves carry meaning, though not always the meanings outsiders assume. Geometric eight-pointed stars aren’t necessarily religious symbols; sometimes they’re just patterns that fit well in circular spaces. Pomegranate motifs do reference fertility and abundance, but they’re also just shapes artisans find satisfying to carve.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Selling Tradition to Tourists Who Don’t Quite Get It
Tourism marketing discovered Uzbek chestnut crafts around 2015, and it’s been a mixed blessing. Hotels in Samarkand and Bukhara now stock chestnut jewelry boxes, often made in workshops that mass-produce them with electric rotary tools—not exactly traditional, but definately faster. Prices dropped, which hurt individual artisans but expanded the market. Some purists complain the craft is being diluted. Maybe they’re right. But I guess it’s also true that more people are learning the basics, even if they’re not reaching master-level skill. A few artisans have adapted by creating higher-end pieces for collectors, emphasizing the wild-sourced materials and hand-tool methods. There’s tension, though. One carver told me through a translator that he resents tourist buyers who haggle prices down and then post Instagram photos calling the work “priceless folk art.” The irony wasn’t lost on him.
Anyway, the forests are still under pressure. Climate change is shifting nut harvest times—frosts come later now, sometimes not until mid-November, which throws off the whole collection calendar. Younger artisans are experimenting with walnuts and even apricot pits as substitutes, but the texture isn’t the same. The craft will probably survive, but it’ll keep changing, the way all living traditions do.
