Uzbekistan in the heart of Central Asia boasts glittering mosques, madrassahs and minarets in the Silk Road cities of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva. These contrast wonderfully with the brutalist Soviet buildings of Tashkent, Urgench and Nukus. This lecture is an overview of the country, and a primer for anyone thinking of visiting. We explore the Savitsky Museum in Nukus, with the second largest collection of Russian Avante Garde Art, collected at a time when these artistic styles were banned by the state. We explore the revival of Islamic miniature painting in Bukhara and the resurgence of handicrafts all over the country that ceased during the 1930s and the Soviet drive to make everything factory-based, see the embroidered suzanis from Nurata, stunning ceramics from Rishton, and the production of silk and velvet in Margilan.

Chris Aslan was born in Turkey and was raised there and in war-torn Beirut. This set him on a course for an adventurous life and he has spent two years at sea, and lived in Central Asia for 15 years. He started off in Khiva, a desert oasis in Uzbekistan, establishing a UNESCO workshop reviving fifteenth century carpet designs and embroideries, and becoming the largest non-government employer in town. He was deported as part of an anti-Western purge, and took a year in Cambridge to write A Carpet Ride to Khiva. Chris then spent several years in the Pamirs mountains of Tajikistan, training yak herders to comb their yaks for their cashmere-like down. Next came a couple more years in Kyrgyzstan living in the world’s largest natural walnut wood and establishing a wood-carving workshop. Since then, Chris has studied and rowed at Oxford and now divides his time between lecturing for the Arts Society, writing fiction and non-fiction in his mountainous home in North Cyprus and returning to Central Asia to lead tours whenever he can, having left a large chunk of his heart there. His latest book is Unravelling the Silk Road.

This lecture takes place at the Village Hall, Headley Road, Grayshott, Surrey, GU26 6TZ and begins at 2pm.