Museum of Applied Arts, Tashkent

Tashkent's best building is a private house from 1907, built for a Russian diplomat who decided that instead of importing European decorators he would bring in the finest craftsmen from across Turkestan and let them work.

The result is a set of rooms carved, painted and tiled by masters from Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand and the Fergana Valley, and it now holds the national collection of applied art. For anyone who cannot get to all those places, it is the most efficient hour in the capital.

The house

The mansion was built for Alexander Polovtsov, a Russian diplomat and collector who was posted to Turkestan and became seriously interested in its crafts. Rather than furnish the house in the style of St Petersburg, he commissioned local masters to finish the interiors.

What they produced is a European floor plan wrapped in Central Asian surfaces: carved and painted ganch, which is the local gypsum plaster, coffered and painted ceilings, majolica tile, carved wood, stained glass in geometric frames, and mirrored niches.

Look for the regional differences, which a guide will point out and which you can learn to see: Khivan carving is finer and more geometric, Bukharan work is broader with floral motifs, and the painted ceilings vary in palette from room to room depending on who made them.

Polovtsov left after the revolution. The house passed through various uses and became a museum in the 1930s, which is the reason the decoration survived when so much else in Tashkent did not.

The collection

Several thousand objects, of which a selection is displayed. The strengths:

Suzani. Large embroidered hangings, chain and satin stitch on cotton or silk, traditionally made by a bride and her family for a dowry. Regional styles differ sharply: Bukhara, Nurata, Shakhrisabz and Samarkand each have their own layouts and palettes.
Ceramics. Rishtan's cobalt and turquoise beside Gijduvan's browns and greens, with older Khorezmian and Samarkand pieces.
Woodwork. Carved doors, columns, chests and Quran stands, including the interlocking lauh stands cut from a single block.
Metal and jewellery. Silver headdresses, amulets, chased copper vessels and knives, including Chust blades.
Textiles beyond suzani. Ikat silks, robes, hats and the woven goods of the pastoral communities.
Musical instruments and carpets, in smaller numbers.

Labelling is uneven and mostly brief. A guide, available at the desk, roughly doubles what you get out of the visit.

How to read a suzani

The embroideries are the heart of the collection and they repay a few minutes of instruction.

The word comes from the Persian for needle. A suzani is worked in silk thread on a cotton or silk ground, usually in several strips embroidered separately by different women of a family and then joined, which is why the pattern sometimes fails to line up across a seam. That mismatch is a sign of authenticity rather than carelessness.

The designs are almost always some arrangement of a central medallion, circular motifs read as moons or suns, flowering plants, pomegranates for fertility, and a border that frames the whole. Regional layouts differ: Nurata work is famously fine and airy with small motifs on a pale ground, Bukhara pieces are denser, Shakhrisabz work uses heavy interlocking patterns, and Samarkand favours large bold circles.

Look at the back if a piece is displayed so that you can. Hand embroidery shows a worked reverse; machine chain stitch, common in modern pieces sold to visitors, looks identical on the front and gives itself away behind.

One more detail to look for: a deliberate flaw. Many older pieces contain a small break in the pattern, a wrong colour or an unfinished motif, left because perfection is considered to belong to God alone.

Visiting

Where: Rakatboshi street, in the Mirabad district, a short taxi ride from the centre.
Hours: daily, generally 9am to 6pm; check for a weekly closing day.
Tickets: inexpensive, with a separate photography fee (last checked: July 2026).
Time needed: an hour, more if you take a guide.
Shop: the museum shop and the craft stalls in the courtyard sell decent work, better than most souvenir shops in the city.

It is also air-conditioned and shaded, which makes it a sensible midday stop in summer.

Ganch, the local plaster

The other thing to understand here is the material the house is decorated with, because you will see it everywhere afterwards.

Ganch is a plaster made from local gypsum, burnt, ground and mixed with clay. It can be cast, carved wet, carved dry, painted or left white, and it is cheap, light and workable, which is why it did the job that carved stone does in other traditions. In a region without much good building stone, this was the answer.

Carvers work it in layers to different depths, producing shadow patterns that change through the day, and in the finest work the background is cut away so far that the surface pattern seems to float. In the Polovtsov house you can put your eye a few centimetres from the wall and see exactly how it was done, which is impossible with the same work high up in a mosque.

Why it is worth an hour

Tashkent frustrates travellers who arrive expecting Silk Road architecture. The earthquake of 1966 and the rebuilding that followed left a modern city, and the great monuments are all elsewhere.

This museum answers that problem in two ways. The building itself is the finest pre-Soviet interior in the city, and the collection is a crash course in the crafts you will meet again in Bukhara, Khiva and the Fergana Valley, with the regional differences laid out side by side.

Go on your first day rather than your last. Knowing the difference between a Nurata suzani and a Shakhrisabz one, or between Rishtan and Gijduvan glaze, makes every bazaar for the rest of the trip more interesting and makes you a much better buyer.

Our carpet and textile guide covers what to look for and what to pay, and the Tashkent travel guide fits this into a day with the Chorsu bazaar and the old city.

Featured image: Ehedaya at English Wikipedia (public domain) via Wikimedia Commons.