A TALE ABOUT THE KELAGAI, OR ABOUT WHERE SILK IS MADE

Legends can be woven about the role of silk in the culture and life of the Azerbaijani people even nowadays when that material, which has remained popular for two thousand years, continues to make our country famous abroad. To say nothing of even more distant bygone days from which all sorts of silk-related rules, customs, omens,   songs and decorative traditions of the Azerbaijanis have come down to us today.

Silk's popularity is due to no small extent to the purely practical characteristics of this material. Silk is strong and durable. Both light-weight and heavy-weight materials can be made from the thread from the silk worm and they will invariably be light and smooth to the touch. Silk is hygienic: it is easy to wash, it dries quickly and the smooth and compact structure of this cloth makes it impossible for insects to linger on it.  

The mystical nature of silk kelagai

Silk also has an almost mystical quality: when it is hot, clothes made from it make the body feel cool and when it is cold, that very same cloth, even a very light cloth, warms the body. It is not surprising that our ancestors deferentially called silk worms "worms of paradise" and silkworm breeding was considered to be a sacred occupation…Very strict demands were made on the profession once and for all amongst master silkworm breeders. Other criteria were taken into account besides the highest skills and tremendous experience. For instance, various virtues displayed by one or other silkworm breeder in community life and even one-off indicators such as how a craftsman slept that day (out of superstitious fear, he would not go to work after having had a bad dream). It goes without saying that these people had a whole host of professional omens. Many of these superstitions which have been made sacred by the centuries have come down to us today. For example, gold jewellery, watches, water and much more should not be brought into premises where there are cocoons or where the silk manufacturing process is under way. No smoking, spitting or swearing is allowed there. True craftsmen never sold the worms or gave them away as presents so as not to drive prosperity out of the home. 

A Silk Festival was held for the first time recently in Sheki, the silk capital of Azerbaijan. A whole set of ancient superstitions and customs related to silk, or rather related to kelagai, or headscarf, made from silk, have evolved there. The kelagai, in all its splendid diversity, accompanied a person from the cradle to the grave. Bright-coloured kelagai were given as presents to celebrate good news, to present to the bride the salver bearing wedding gifts, to give to relatives of the newly-weds at a wedding, to tie on the horn of a sacrificial sheep, to bestow on a master builder on completion of a house, to tie on gates to show that somebody there had returned from the army or had got married …

Black kelagai were worn by women in mourning. Exactly the same kind of silk scarf - but brighter (usually red) hid the bride's face during the wedding ceremony. Elderly women and widows preferred dark colours or bright, multi-coloured kelagai, usually tying them in a turban. Unmarried women and young housewives wore white or bright kelagai, tying them like a headscarf.

Kelagai (and nowadays modern scarves, too) made in Sheki are still dyed in traditional colours, mainly using natural dyes. The gamut of colours is rather broad and the hues are varied but it all boils down mainly to the good old range of about 15 colours. Naturally, there is white and black, the symbol of youth and age correspondingly. Then there are the colours of spring, greenery and water: grass-green, blue-green (turquoise) and dark blue. The colours of the middle spectrum are also splendid: indigo, lilac, dark pink and of course, sacramental scarlet, the most popular in all kinds of national everyday customs. The palette of earth colours is the broadest: dark coffee, orange, apricot (pinkish- yellow), ochre, golden and the most popular of these hues - the incomparable onion colour. Its name is no accident for it is namely the skin of an onion which gives the required colour using recipes of the old craftsmen. 

However, everything that has been said about colours related to the kelagai's background colour. No less important, although more deeply hidden, the pattern around the border of the scarf, or more rarely the background pattern in the scarf, was, without exaggeration, sacramental. The pattern on the kelagai can be geometrical, plants or animals (birds, most often peacocks) or calligraphy. But the pattern is most often composed of plants: buds, oranges, irises, cherry blossom and, of course, grapes - the eternal symbol of fertility. Contemporary Azerbaijani artists working in batik (using hot wax to draw on cloth) also apply this technique to kelagai. They are keen to experiment with pattern and this results in things bearing ancient imprints which are at the same time ultramodern. But despite all this, the traditional kelagai is still tops - it is still loved and worn on all occasions. 

The kelagai plant 

In Soviet times, Sheki was the "silk centre" of the country. The plant received a 40- per-cent state subsidy and was staffed by personnel from higher educational institutions: the Kostroma Technological Institute trained weaving specialists and Tashkent University trained cocoon reeling specialists. Students from Sheki were sent to both of these institutions to study.  Raw materials (cocoons) were sent to the city plant, which employed 7,000 people, from 35 silkworm breeding districts of the country. The enterprise had close links with the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus and the republics of Central Asia which provided not only raw materials but also spare parts for equipment. 

Everything changed with the collapse of the USSR, and the silkworm breeding industry in Azerbaijan fell into a state of stagnation from which it emerged quite recently but in bounds thanks first of all to investment from Uzbekistan. Azerbaijani silk will very soon take once again the place of honour it deserves in this global product range. Rasim Hasanov, chief engineer of Sheki-Ipek Ltd, told R+ how the industry was restored, how the plant was brought back to life and about its present and future production.

He has risen through the ranks of the industry. He began work as an unskilled labourer in 1979 then after graduating from Kostroma Technological Institute became a skilled weaver then a technical expert, then a manager. Later he was appointed deputy chief engineer and now he is a specialist who knows silk manufacturing theory and practice thoroughly. He is the right hand of the plant director. Incidentally, the plant celebrated its 75th anniversary on 7th November last year and the chief engineer celebrated his 45th birthday on the same day. 

"We mostly buy cocoons from Uzbekistan. Now, unlike in Soviet times, we get cocoons from only 13 districts from farms which are part of the District Silk System. The previous system, under which the plant had many branches in other regions, disintegrated when we were standing idle in the 1990s: the Gakh branch changed over to growing cotton and the others closed completely - there was nowhere for them to deliver their products to. Now everything is being restored gradually but we are not yet able to cope on our own and so we buy cocoons from Uzbekistan. Of course, the most convenient thing is to use raw materials grown in your own area so we recently bought three million mulberry saplings from Uzbekistan to plant in the Sheki zone. We hope to be able to resolve many problems, including this one, within the framework of the concept for the development of silkworm breeding for 2006-15 and that we will work solely using our own country's raw materials in five or six years. This year, the volume of local raw materials will triple, according to preliminary estimates," R. Hasanov said.  

Silk work by craftsmen

The chief engineer said that the plant had taken its most important step forward in the last two years. In 2001, Sheki-Ipek Ltd received from the state a free cash injection of 500,000 manats, and later another 1.5 million manats. Then the plant was placed out to tender and Uzbek investors appeared (staff were offered shares on privileged terms when the plant was privatised). As a result, if in the 1990s just 50-100 people were employed at the plant, and two years later - 200-300, now there are 1,800 staff. The whole plant has undergone fundamental repairs. A mini-dying workshop has been set up where cloth, including crepe chiffon and cotton, are hand dyed. This is an expensive product. And the range of goods manufactured includes scarves which are not just hand dyed but which are also hand made from start to finish. A year ago, there was just one ventilator on the production line where working conditions were particularly harmful in the reeling workshop and now there are 20 of them. There were 35 looms in the weaving workshop two years ago and now there are 200. Sheki-Ipek Ltd intends to buy new equipment now, state-of-the-art looms from Italy and cocoon reeling looms from Japan.  

"We try to reward our staff as far as possible. Of course, we are not yet able to provide them with housing as was the case in Soviet times (it should be said that 90 per cent of the five-storey apartment blocks in modern-day Sheki is our plant's housing stock from Soviet times.) But the plant has a polyclinic with modern equipment which the enterprise paid for and it also has a good canteen. It also has a club which was redecorated recently and which has 400 seats. High-ranking guests held a briefing there at the Silk Festival. The management plans to build a sanatorium for workers in the industry soon. The average wage of our staff is 70-80 manats now but we present a selection of products - meat, rice and so on - to them on every holiday," he said.

Today, the products made by Sheki-Ipek Ltd go mainly to Russia, Turkey and Iran. Every month, 20,000-30,000 monotone kelagai are exported to Iran alone and they are printed with local traditional patterns there. Cloth for headscarves and dresses (especially crepe chiffon), kelagai and scarves sell very well. But of course, Azerbaijan also provides silk products for itself. The order for the production of the first national military epaulettes in the early 1990s is considered to be a most honoured one in the new history of the plant. They also make carpets from natural silk - but only to order, R. Hasanov said. A silk carpet is much more expensive than a woollen carpet, even a hand-made one - 1 sq.m. costs 1,200-1,250 US dollars. They don't just sell products - they also sell the waste from manufacturing. In a number of countries, especially in China and France, the waste from the pupae of silkworms is used in perfumery and also as a food additive in poultry farms.