By the 19th century, curiously, the trading positions of Central Asia and China had been reversed, and Chinese buyers sought out silk items made farther west. To add something extra to their best robes, Central Asian artisans of this era perfected one of the most elaborate textile techniques ever devised.

The skill in ikat is not so much in the weaving as the dyeing. Depending on how many colors are required, an ikat cloth could require as many as 10 dyeing stages. (See “Making Ikat,” page 20.) To viewers in search of the crisp colors and pattern definition that characterize woven and embroidered designs, the results might not immediately be seen as exceptional: “Out of focus” is a common description. This is, of course, part of the effect, and today, the dreamy, impressionistic look of ikats has become newly appealing. In an age of mechanization, it virtually spells “handcrafted.”

In centuries past, although ikats were widely admired, artisans in few parts of the world had the patience to create them. The main production centers were in pockets of Central Asia, India, Japan, Southeast Asia, parts of the Middle East and—in what scholars believe is a case of “parallel development”—Central and South America. We know less about the history of ikats than might be supposed. No textile can survive more than a few centuries unless buried in a dehumidified environment, and because Muslim funeral practices precluded the use of grave goods, it is particularly difficult

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART / ART RESOURCE

Attributed to a Yemeni workshop of the 10th century, this tiraz fragment is one of the earliest known examples of resist-dye weaving, or ikat.

The word ikat comes, however, not from Central Asia, but from the Malay verb mengikat, “to tie.” Ikat is now the word used worldwide, even though the traditional word in Central Asia was abrbandi, which joins the Persian words for “cloud” and “workshop,” and in common usage, the term came to refer to both the woven products and the workshops. The region of Central Asia that took abrbandi to its greatest artistic height is now mostly within Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic that has also been known by many names over time, including Transoxiana, Tartary and Mawarannahr, “what is beyond the river.” (The river in question is the Oxus, which defines the western side of the region, while the Jaxartes demarcates its eastern edge.) The land itself has never been the reason armies coveted it: Its strategic position astride the world’s greatest trade route was what made it worth fighting for.

The varieties of ikat are as different as the climates of hot, humid Southeast Asia and dusty, dry Central Asia. The Malay ikats have designs that are delicate to the point of being almost imperceptible, especially when generations of use have faded them. In Central Asia, the design spirit is as bold as the topography. But unlike the region’s vibrant tribal rugs, ikats were the products of the great cities of the region, especially Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva. In these cities, the most significant ethnic populations were Uzbeks and Tajiks, followed by dozens of other tribal and regional groups. In many centers, a substantial Jewish population was at the heart of the textile industry.

The ikats produced in the region had an honored part to play in domestic decoration, as wall-hangings that brightened rooms and as women’s garments worn in the home. In all its variations, there were different levels of ikat quality. The best used silk for both warp and weft; at the very top was a velvet weave that required an extra set of warp threads to make the pile. The plainest used cotton in the weft and silk only in the warp. The patterns that were dyed and woven into the cloths used motifs that date back millennia and often appear also in other crafts, especially jewelry and architecture: the ram’s horn, amulet and tambourine are enduring favorites, along with the “tree of life” and the boteh (paisley).

Above all, color was the most vital ingredient in the luxuriance of ikat: the more colors, the more prestigious the result. Before inexpensive industrial aniline dyes brightened the look of all textiles in the second half of the 19th century with their harsher colors, the cloths of Central Asia were dependent on pomegranate peel for black dyes, crushed cochineal insects for deep reds, the madder plant for lighter reds and mauves, and other sources for a wide palette of greens, yellows, indigos, pinks and violets, all used extensively by the ikat dyers.

The arrival of aniline dyes brought traditional ways of dyeing to an end and, with them, the elegant ways in which natural colors faded that had been such a source of wonder, particularly in the West. At the same time, the export of textiles to Europe made ikats popular, although Europe never showed the same faddish demand for ikats as it did for Kashmiri shawls. (In Russia, the elite of Moscow and St. Petersburg held parties at which “exotic” garb from Central Asia was the theme.)

Today, over the last decade and a half, as the people of modern Uzbekistan have looked to their past for inspiration and identity, ikat has again become a popular choice. Much of the ikat revival has not involved silk but printed textiles made with acetate threads and aniline dyes. However, in the late 1990’s, with support from both local institutions and international cultural organizations, the Yodgorlik Handloom Weaving Mill in the Ferghana Valley, the main textile-weaving area of Uzbekistan,

VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM / DICK DOUGHTY

Detail of a silk-warp man’s ikat robe, probably woven in Samarkand between 1860 and 1870.

This has awakened—following decades of Soviet-style enterprise—a spark of entrepreneurial self-interest. Many producers work in partnership with such non-governmental organizations as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World Bank or Aid to Artisans, which have also helped build distribution networks and organize trade fairs. Most recently, customers are now not just tourists passing through, but on-line shoppers around the world. To cater to modern lifestyles, ikat workshops are no longer producing the voluminous masterpiece robes of 100 years ago: Instead, scarves are the most popular choice these days. Durable and light, they are an ideal mail-order item.

Thanks to this revival, silk ikats have regained much of their former popularity in Uzbekistan. They have become a symbol of cultural identity in a region where “cultural cleansing” was once an official Soviet policy. In Uzbek fashion festivals, ikats now often play a central role.

Other outsiders have noticed, too: Fashion designer Oscar de la Renta recently visited Uzbekistan and filled his fall 2005 collection with skirts and coats that drew from ikats. At the same time, designer Diane von Furstenberg unveiled her own tributes to the region. It’s a global visibility that, after decades of neglect, gives a bright future to one of the world’s great textile traditions.

During the late 19th century, ikat dyers were not the only craftsmen who were experimenting with color.

Photography was also being transformed, and among the pioneers of polychromy was Sergei Mikhailov Prokudin-Gorskii, a prolific Russian photographer who included Central Asia in his travels. When a subject as colorful as ikat textiles appears, it is a revelation to see images from an era we know mostly through monochrome brought to dazzling, full-color life.

Although Prokudin-Gorskii was not the first photographer to work in color, there is a richness to his work that is entirely unexpected from the early 20th century. This is partly because the images we see now are not prints from his own time. His photographs were originally projected onto a screen by registering three separate monochrome transparency images, each taken with a different filter of red, green and blue. Precisely aligned and illuminated with a projector, the three images appeared in full color.

Today, digital technology is recreating his photographs under the auspices of the us Library of Congress, which bought them from the photographer’s heirs after his death in 1944. The accuracy of the color can be verified by comparing a background feature in the photographs—the tiles on the wall of a building, for example—with the same feature as it is now. The match is almost perfect.