I used to think oak was just oak.
But then I spent three weeks in Uzbekistan’s Fergana Valley watching a seventy-two-year-old craftsman named Aziz Rahimov shape a single plank of Quercus robur—English oak, though calling it “English” in Central Asia feels absurd—into a wedding chest that would outlive his grandchildren. The wood came from trees planted in the 1940s along irrigation canals, part of Stalin’s shelter-belt program that nobody talks about anymore, and Aziz worked with tools his father made in 1963: a curved adze, two chisels with handles wrapped in leather that smelled like horses, and a bow drill that required, I’m not kidding, a specific humidity level to function properly. He’d lick his thumb and test the air every twenty minutes. When I asked why oak and not walnut or poplar—both easier to source locally—he looked at me like I’d asked why water flows downhill. “Oak remembers,” he said, which made no sense until I watched him steam-bend a piece that had been air-drying for eight years, the grain flexing but never splintering, holding curves that seemed geometrically impossible.
The thing is, Uzbek oak craft isn’t one tradition. It’s maybe four or five, depending on who you ask and whether you count the Bukharan style separately. In Samarkand, they carve geometric patterns that mirror the Registan’s tile work—stars within stars, hexagons that tessellate in ways that hurt your eyes if you stare too long. In Khiva, it’s more figurative: pomegranates, grape vines, stylized birds that might be hoopoes or might be phoenixes, nobody’s entirely sure anymore because the Ottoman influence mixed with Persian motifs sometime around the 16th century and records are, let’s say, incomplete.
When Soviet Planners Accidentally Preserved Medieval Joinery Techniques Through Forced Collectivization
Here’s the thing: the Soviet period nearly killed this craft, but also—and this is the weird part—saved it. Between 1930 and 1953, artisan workshops got absorbed into woodworking collectives that were supposed to mass-produce furniture for new apartment blocks. Except the quotas were absurd (one collective in Namangan was supposed to produce 600 chairs monthly with equipment designed for 150), so craftsmen started using traditional joinery methods because they were faster than waiting for glue to dry or sourcing metal fasteners that never arrived on time. Mortise-and-tenon joints, dovetails, butterfly keys—techniques that medieval Timurid woodworkers had perfected came back not through cultural revival but through logistical desperation. I found records in Tashkent’s state archives showing that by 1947, roughly 73% of collective furniture used no nails or screws, which Soviet inspectors flagged as “primitive” but which also meant the furniture lasted decades instead of years.
The oak itself is central Asian’s weird cousin. Quercus robur grows here at the absolute eastern edge of its range, mixed with Q. petraea in the Chatkal Mountains, and the trees develop this incredibly dense grain—something like 720 kg per cubic meter when properly seasoned, compared to maybe 680 for European oak—because they’re growing in semi-arid conditions with cold winters that would kill most hardwoods. The growth rings are tight, sometimes 40 rings per inch in older specimens, which makes the wood murder on tools but also incredibly stable. Aziz showed me a cabinet his grandfather made in 1891 (the date was carved inside, along with a Quranic verse) that had lived through two earthquakes, a flood, and decades of 40°C summers without a single crack in the panels.
Wait—maybe I should mention that none of this is economically viable anymore.
Young craftsmen in Uzbekistan can make more money in construction or, increasingly, in Tashkent’s tech sector, which has been growing at something like 15% annually since 2019. The few artisans still working with oak are mostly over sixty, and their customer base is either wealthy Tashkent families commissioning traditional wedding furniture or, weirdly, European antique dealers who’ve figured out that Uzbek oak pieces are undervalued compared to similar-quality Caucasian or Turkish work. A chest that takes three months to make might sell locally for $800, which is good money in Fergana but doesn’t reflect the skill level—those same dealers flip them in Munich or London for $4,000 to $6,000. Aziz knows this. He doesn’t particularly care. When I asked if he resented the markup, he shrugged and said his grandfather sold pieces to Russian officers for “two chickens and some tobacco,” so relatively speaking, things have improved.
Why Contemporary Designers Keep Trying to Modernize Something That Works Perfectly Well Already
There’s a push now, mostly from Tashkent-based designers who studied in Moscow or Milan, to “reimagine” traditional oak craft for contemporary markets. Clean lines, minimalist joinery, lighter stains that show off the grain—basically, making Uzbek oak look like mid-century Scandinavian furniture, which strikes me as missing the entire point. The traditional aesthetic is maximalist, almost aggressive: every surface carved, inlaid with walnut or dyed bone, finished with a dark oil that makes the wood look nearly black in low light. It’s supposed to be heavy, imposing, a physical representation of permanence in a region where empires rose and collapsed every few centuries. I saw one “modernized” piece at a Tashkent gallery—a coffee table with tapered legs and a clear poly finish—that was technically well-made but felt like watching someone translate Rumi into corporate email language.
Honestly, I don’t know if this craft survives another generation.
Aziz has one apprentice, a nephew who’s twenty-six and clearly itching to move to Dubai where his cousin works in hotel management. The government’s tourism ministry occasionally features traditional crafts in promotional materials, but actual support—funding, workshop space, tax breaks—is minimal. Meanwhile, Chinese-made furniture floods the market at prices that make hand-crafted oak economically absurd for most families. The wedding chest Aziz was making when I visited? Commissioned by a family in Andijan whose grandmother had insisted, apparently threatening to boycott the ceremony if they bought factory furniture. That kind of intergenerational pressure is weakening. Younger Uzbeks I talked to admired the craftsmanship in theory but couldn’t imagine actually living with those heavy, dark pieces in their apartments.
The wood will outlast the craft, probably. Those shelter-belt oaks are still growing, still producing timber with that characteristic tight grain, still waiting for craftsmen who may or may not exist in twenty years. Aziz told me he’s been documenting techniques in notebooks—measurements, joint angles, finishing recipes involving linseed oil and beeswax in ratios he wouldn’t specify—but he’s not sure who he’s writing them for. His nephew, maybe. Or maybe just for the record, so someone eventually can say this is how it was done, back when people still remembered.
