Rishtan ceramists

L'atelier des potiers.

Motif de céramique, musée de la céramique Ousmanov à Richtan.

The town of Rishtan is 50 km away from Kokand, almost at the foot of mountains. I begin with a stroll which leads me to a beauiful chaïkhana where a wedding dinner is getting ready and behind which men are preparing a lunch. They invite me to come back later when the plov will be cooked.
 
In the potter's villagee, I meet the boss of a ceramic shop. I visit with him this curious place, surrounded with dark rooms where craftsmen are working in a intense heat. The decoration and the activity seem coming from the Middle Ages. Heaps of brown potteries, potters at work, bare-chested, hands grasping the clay, squeaking potter's wheels. Sensualism of the shaping, earth ovens where glows the fires.

Derrière la chaïkhana avant le plov.

Céramiste au travail dans le village des potiers.

A man drives me then on his motorcycle to the small ceramic museum arranged by Roustam Ousmanov and where he lives. The door is opened but there is nobody inside. Impossible to ignore the tapshan in the entrance, in the twilight streaked by a ray of sunshine. Everywhere are exposed tea sets, cups, vases, jars, dishes splendidly decorated with fishes and with multicolored birds, with abstract patterns or with Arabic calligraphy. Two young men settle silently to resume their work interrupted by the lunch break. Concentrated on the motives which they paint, they are indifferent to my presence. But it is past noon and I have to go back to the chaïkhana.

Aïwan à dais cintré dans le Musée de la Céramique, rue Al-Roshodoni.

Même lieu, entrée

I will not meet the host but I will learn through documents found there that the Ousmanov family came from Russia and stopped in this stage of the Silk Road with the project to reproduce the Chinese pottery. Although the kaolin, this white, fireproof and crumbly clay looked for the manufacturing of the china, was untraceable around, the ceramists had settled down there because the clay quality is so high that no preliminary treatment is required. They used, and still use, the alkaline organic varnish ishkor, the same which was used in the medieval time to get the luminous blue-green color of the varnished tiles which recover the walls of the Samarkand monuments. Having obtained a diploma in Tashkent Art Institute, Roustam came back to Richtan where he was apointed as chief painter in the ceramic factory. He then was poring over the manufacturing of the former ceramics, what enabled him to gradually develop an original style where the liberty of composition is combined with the technical mastery. Since the Independence, he works right here, in his workshop-museum, with his pupils.

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