Kazakh Carpets: Artistic Heritage And Cultural Memory

Abstract

This article examines the artistic and cultural significance of the Kazakh carpet in the traditional society of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The study aims to determine how the carpet’s materials, weaving techniques, compositional structure, ornaments, colour harmony, and context of use shaped its artistic meaning. The sources include historical documents, travellers’ accounts, materials related to Kazakh customary law, examples of oral literature, and published descriptions of carpets held in museum collections in Kazakhstan. Kazakh carpets were analysed using formal-stylistic, comparative-typological, semantic, and historical source-analysis methods. Particular attention was paid to the structure of the central field and borders, the arrangement of ornaments, the repetition of geometric and zoomorphic motifs, and the artistic functions of red, yellow, green, and dark colours. The weaving characteristics of pile and flatwoven carpets were also considered. The findings demonstrate that the Kazakh carpet was not merely a household object or a work of decorative art. As an important part of a bride’s trousseau, it reflected the social standing of her family; it was also used as a valuable object in gift exchange and customary compensation practices and functioned as a symbol of prestige at ceremonial gatherings. The carpet embodied women’s collective labour, craftsmanship, and artistic experience. It therefore served as an artistic heritage object that preserved the cultural memory of the family, lineage, and community. The scientific novelty of the study lies in interpreting the Kazakh carpet not simply as a collection of ornaments but as an integral work of art in which artistic composition, weaving technology, social function, and cultural memory are closely interconnected.