What material are Kyrgyz carpets made from?

The main stages of carpet making are the preparation of yarn, then the carpet's foundation, and the weaving process. All these types of work in manual production, on which carpet weaving has been based for centuries, are very labor-intensive.

Kyrgyz people predominantly wove carpets from wool. However, there was also carpet production based on cotton with the same weft. Cotton yarn, as the artisans say, has been used since ancient times and was bought at the market. Among the Kyrgyz group of Kydyrsha living in Uzbekistan, A. A. Semenov also noted the presence of carpets made on a paper base with wool weft. Carpets from Eastern Turkestan (mainly from Hotan) are usually woven on a paper base.

For making carpets, the Kyrgyz used sheep, goat, and camel wool. Preference was always given to camel wool, valued for its main quality—durability. In the Lailak and Batken regions, we did not encounter carpet products made from camel wool.

In addition to camel wool, goat wool is widely used for the foundation, which is significantly strong but coarse, resulting in a rough fabric. Recently, carpets have mainly been made from goat wool in the Lailak, Batken, and southern Alai regions. Sometimes white goat down is used for the pile (tuft). However, sheep wool, mainly gray in color and less frequently brown, is most commonly used in the carpet products of the Osh Kyrgyz. It is used for the foundation, weft, and pile.

Spring-sheared sheep wool is preferred, although autumn shearing is also used. Coarser wool is used for the foundation and weft of the carpet, while softer wool (usually from spring shearing) is used for the pile. The sheared wool is washed in cold water and dried.

Usually, the wool is split by hand. From the produced elongated strands, the artisans spin threads. The yarn for the pile, weft, and foundation is prepared differently. The threads intended for the foundation of the carpets are spun and twisted very tightly, while trying to give it a uniform thickness, as any irregularity negatively affects the quality of the fabric. The twisted threads for the carpet foundation undergo further processing. They are unwound onto two pegs. The resulting skeins are usually boiled in salty water for about an hour, then thrown into a pot of cold water, and the already cooled wet wool is unwound onto two pegs set 6–8 meters apart. For three days, the threads are poured with hot water (one or two times a day) and each time the yarn is pulled tightly. Thus processed, the thread has great strength and elasticity. The entire process of preparing the threads for the carpet foundation is called chyn-doo, meaning strengthening. Then the threads are wound into special-shaped balls that are convenient for weaving.

The wool foundation largely determines the quality of the Kyrgyz carpet. It is strong but thick and coarse, sharply differing from the foundation prepared by Turkmen, whose products are known for their elegance. In this regard, Kyrgyz ancient small carpet products differ, as their foundation was significantly thinner.