CIRCA: 1900’s (first half)
Small hand woven Central Asian silk purse, probably Uzbek or Turkoman, of indeterminate use. It exhibits a checkerboard type pattern with each square crossed by a ladder like stripe which creates and hour-glass like effect and serves to separate the various colours. It is flat-woven and made of tightly stitched hand spun silk with a high ‘knot’ / stitch count of approximately 270 per square inch (approx 4200 per square decimeter) and the inside lining is of printed Russian cotton. We bought this in 1972 near the northern boarder of Afghanistan, north-west of Mazar-i-Sharif, looking much like it does today. An unusual one-off decorative tribal piece certainly intended for (an undetermined) personal use.