Village women and townspeople embroidered interior panels used to decorate the premises during weddings and other festivities, steppe women, no less skilled craftswomen, decorated carpets, small bags and clothes with embroidery.
Among the world-famous embroiderers are Uzbek women of the Lakai and Kungrat tribes populating the south of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and the north of Afghanistan in the late 19th – early 20th centuries.
The Kungrats still make up a significant part of the population of the Surkhandarya and Kashkadarya regions. The Lakais moved to Tajikistan and Afghanistan under the pressure of political events in the early 20th century. Unfortunately, after 1925, the tradition of Lakai and Kungrat embroidery began gradually fading away. And only the rarities of its heyday please us with expressive colors and mysterious patterns.
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The most important type of Lakai and Kungrat embroidery is ilgichi bags (which means a hanging thing). They are of three types: tabaklau, at-torba and uuk-kap. Tabaklau is a rectangular or square envelope-shaped bag for storing or transporting dishes (tabak means cup). At-torba is a bag that was hung on a horse chest during the holidays; it differs from tabaklau in the absence of a flap (i.e., it does not have the shape of an envelope). Uuk-kap is a bag for uuk, i.e. yurt poles tied in two bundles during migrations and loaded onto a horse. This type of ilgich has the shape of an elongated pentagon. A similar in form embroidery was also intended for storing the sheep shearing shears – kaichidon. There were also special embroidered bags for mirrors which were of great value among nomads – oyna-khalta, tea bags – choy-khalta, for money – pul-khalta, and much more.
Until now, scholars cannot figure out the content of the patterns of «steppe» embroidery. One of the most mysterious is the “onion” motif with two horn-shaped curls diverging at the top on Lakai uuk-kap similar to a female figurine. In this regard, this motif clearly traces a connection with the ancient Turkic mother goddess Umai, the patroness of women in childbirth, one of the key figures in the Tengrian pantheon. One of the meanings of the name Umai is the uterus, which means that there is a reason to see the image of the uterus in this motif.
