I used to think mulberry trees were just about silkworms.
Turns out, in the Fergana Valley and around Samarkand, the wood itself has been shaping Uzbek craft traditions for centuries—maybe longer, though pinning down exact dates is tricky when you’re talking about oral histories and workshops that pass through families like heirlooms. The mulberry tree, Morus alba mostly, grows fast and dense in Central Asia’s continental climate, and its wood has this peculiar quality: it’s hard enough to hold intricate carvings but workable enough that you don’t need industrial tools. Craftsmen in Bukhara and Khiva have been carving it into everything from sandiq chests to mosque doors, and the grain—wait—the grain has these subtle color shifts, pale gold to deep amber, that you can’t really replicate with stains. I’ve seen photos of 19th-century pieces where the wood’s aged into something almost bronze-looking, though I guess that’s also the natural oils oxidizing over decades. Anyway, the tree’s connection to silk production meant it was everywhere, planted deliberately along trade routes, so the wood became this almost accidental resource that craftsmen just started experimenting with.
The Geometry Nobody Warns You About When You Start Carving
Here’s the thing: Uzbek woodwork isn’t just decorative—it’s mathematical in a way that can feel overwhelming if you’re trying to understand the patterns. The islimi floral motifs and girih geometric designs require planning cuts at angles that repeat across panels, sometimes covering entire doorways or ceiling beams. A master carver in Kokand once told a researcher (I’m paraphrasing from a 2018 UNESCO report) that apprentices spend years just learning to measure proportions by eye, because templates only get you halfway. The mulberry wood’s density matters here—it doesn’t splinter easily when you’re chiseling those tiny negative spaces between pattern elements, which is why you see such delicate lacework effects in older pieces.
But there’s also this tension nobody talks about much. Traditional methods are slow, and the market for handmade mulberry furniture has shifted toward tourists wanting “authentic” souvenirs, which sometimes means simplified designs that take a week instead of three months. I’ve read accounts of older craftsmen in Margilan expressing frustration—not quite bitterness, but a kind of tired resignation—that the intricate ceiling panels their grandfathers made are now mostly commissioned by museums or wealthy collectors, not everyday households.
How Silkworm Cultivation Accidentally Preserved a Woodworking Tradition Through Soviet Collectivization
The Soviet era could’ve killed this craft entirely, honestly. Central planning wasn’t exactly friendly to artisan workshops, and a lot of traditional skills got redirected toward factory production. But mulberry trees were protected—actively cultivated, even—because sericulture (silkworm farming) was an economic priority for the Uzbek SSR. The trees stayed in the landscape, which meant the wood supply never fully disappeared. Some craftsmen adapted by working in state-run furniture cooperatives, where they’d carve standardized designs during the day and keep the complex traditional patterns alive through private commissions or family projects. It’s messy history; you can’t really separate the preservation of the craft from the economic incentives that had nothing to do with cultural heritage. A 1987 study from Tashkent State University noted that roughly 60% of traditional woodcarvers in the Fergana region were technically employed in industrial roles but maintained private workshops—though those numbers are estimates, give or take, since informal economies don’t leave tidy records.
Why Modern Artisans Are Mixing Mulberry Wood With Walnut and Nobody’s Quite Sure If That’s Innovation or Compromise
Walk through the craft bazaars in Tashkand today, and you’ll see pieces that blend mulberry with walnut or even imported hardwoods.
Some artisans argue it’s practical—walnut’s darker tones create contrast in inlay work, and it’s more available now that mulberry groves are shrinking due to urban expansion and agricultural shifts toward cotton. Others see it as diluting the tradition, though I think that’s maybe too rigid a view when craft has always evolved based on what’s accessible. The wood itself carries this specific cultural weight: mulberry leaves fed the silkworms that made the Silk Road profitable, and the timber built the mahallas (neighborhood quarters) where those traders stayed. There’s a kind of poetic circularity there, even if it sounds sentimental. A contemporary carver I read about in a 2021 article definitely felt that weight—he described using reclaimed mulberry from a 150-year-old house demolition, saying the wood still smelled faintly sweet when he cut into it, which is apparently characteristic of aged mulberry. Whether that’s objectively true or just the romance of the material, I can’t say for certain, but it stuck with me as an example of how craftspeople narrate their relationship to these materials—not just as resources, but as living links to older systems of knowledge that are, honestly, pretty fragile right now.
