Production of dishes and household items from wood.
The materials used were juniper, willow (tal), birch (kayin), poplar (terek), apricot (oruk), and walnut (jangak) trees. Techniques such as turning, hollowing, burning, and bending were applied. Woodworkers (жыгач уст) manually used a knife (uйди) and a lathe (кырма, дукён) to make large round wooden plates (жыгач табак) with a flat bottom and wide upward-curved edges (Burkovsky, 1954, p. 89) and large deep bowls чара (diameter 40 to 50 cm, depth from 12 to 20 cm). In a nomad's household, the bowl had a wide range of uses. It was used for kneading dough, storing pieces of meat in both raw and cooked forms, keeping milk, and serving various dishes (Antipina, 1962, p. 145).
On the lathe, cups (аяк, кесе) of various sizes and depths, with different profiles, bottoms, and trays were also made. Some of them were goblet-shaped, while others were wide. Craftsmen also produced small cups (чёйчок), which usually had a more elegant appearance and thin walls—sometimes made from the root of wild cherry (чийе).
Flat plates (илеген) and small cylindrical containers for storing salt were also made from wood. For storing oil and sour cream, unique vessels called тогорочо, курма were created. Common household items included rolling pins (уболук), boards for rolling dough (камыр такта), chests for storing food (укёк), and wooden devices for drying meat (аш ала бакан) (Akmataliev, 1990, p. 112). The dishes made on the lathe were lightly smoked in a small clay smoker (гужу). Sometimes the dishes were painted red using mineral paint (жошо) or white. Birch or willow wood was used for making wooden spoons (кашык) and ladles (чёмуч) (Akmataliev, 1990, p. 112).
Wooden barrels and buckets (челек, кубу, жыгач кубу) of various sizes and shapes made from juniper wood were widely used in households. They held water and were used to make and store dairy products. Production was seasonal, as juniper could only be bent in the summer. Buckets were made from soaked, easily bendable wooden planks, which were bent into a tube so that one edge overlapped the other. The edges were secured with two sticks (кычкач) (Antipina, 1962, p. 148).
The mortar (соку) had two shapes: cylindrical or goblet-shaped. It was made from hardwood trees in two ways. In some cases, the center of the log was first burned out and then worked with a chisel. In others, it was simply hollowed out. The pestle for the mortar was made of wood (соку билек) or stone (соку таш). A vessel for churning butter (куу, гуу) was made from hardwood, hollowed out from a whole log (burning was also used) or from planks bound with an iron hoop, with a bottom inserted. The churns for mixing kumys were made in the shape of a cross or circle with triangular cutouts (Antipina, 1962, p. 149). Churns for shaking kumys—бишкек—had handles decorated with carved patterns.
An essential household item was wooden cases, which were used to store porcelain bowls during migrations. They were attached to the saddle with the convex side facing out and hung from the upper edge of the walls in the yurt. This type of utensil was usually hollowed out from softwood, covered with leather on the outside, sometimes adorned with embossed patterns. The case had a leather lid and a strap handle. There were also other types of cases, particularly woven from twigs. For everyday needs, Kyrgyz craftsmen carved simple dishes from a single piece of wood in just a few forms, often without decorative carving.
Traditional utensils of the Kyrgyz in the past century