Asian Textiles, the magazine of the Oxford Asian Textile Group, has just published my article on saukele, the tall hats worn by several different ethnic groups in Central Asia, including the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Qaraqalpaqs. The article goes into the background history of this fascinating item of clothing, and shows that it has a long tradition stretching back thousands of years. The tall hats worn in Western Europe during the Middle Ages in all likelihood were derived from a version of the tall hats worn by Kipchak/Mamluk women in the Middle East. You can read a copy of the article here.
Month: October 2024
The Man who loved Siberia
My review of The Man who Loved Siberia has just been published by the journal Sibirica. It tells the remarkable story of Fritz Dorries, a German adventurer and natural history collector, who spent over 20 years in the wildest parts of the Amur basin in Eastern Siberia from 1877 to 1899 collecting and sending flora and fauna specimens to European museums.
The book was compiled from notes written by Dorries for his daughters when he reached the age of 90 in 1942. Accounts by travellers of this isolated and trackless wilderness are hard to come by, so the stories told by Dorries are worth reading. He first set out east in 1877 when he was just 25, inspired by the picture of a rare butterfly that his father had shown him when he was just 4 years old.
Over the course of the next 22 years he eventually collected 61,500 butterflies from 996 species, of which 275 were new to science and several of which were named after him. In addition, there were 14,500 beetle specimens (1,490 species) and 4,500 flies, bees, wasps, and other hymenopterans (195 species), added to which were hundreds of plants, predators (including tigers), birds, and bird nests. On behalf of museums across Europe, Dörries also collected large numbers of ethnographic objects from the tribes living along the Amur, as well as items from other peoples from Eastern Siberia.
You can read the full review here.
The Great Restorer
During my recent trip to Kazakhstan I had the great pleasure of interviewing Krym Altynbekov, a remarkable restorer of archaeological artefacts. Krym is responsible recreating the costumes and equipment found in ancient burials. In particular, he has specialised in the clothing of some of the Scythian/Saka burials found across the country. My article on Krym has now been published in the Astana Times and you can read it here.
Siberian Steppes 