Wood Carving: Preserving an Ancient Craft
Tajikabad has a rich history of carpentry, wood carving, blacksmithing, embroidery, and jewelry-making. Many people use wooden plates, but few know how they are made. Tajik wooden plates, known as tabak or tabaki chubi, have a centuries-old history. They can be found in nearly every Tajik village and even urban home. Wooden tableware is used for traditional dishes like kurutob, shakarob, fatir-shurbo, or fatir-maska. Tabaki chubin is used for communal meals, where food is typically eaten with hands rather than spoons.
Previously, plates, spoons, mugpari (tools for decorating flatbreads), and other kitchen utensils were crafted by hand. Today, the number of such artisans can be counted on fingers. The tableware is mostly made from walnut, plane tree, and mulberry wood, rarely from willow. The material can be identified by color: white indicates willow, yellowish denotes mulberry, reddish signifies plane tree, and dark brown means walnut. The older the tree, the wider its trunk, yielding quality tableware that won’t crack with the first use.
A craftsman quickly processes a large trunk with a chainsaw, slicing it into disks. One disk, approximately 90-100 cm in diameter, is divided into four pieces, each destined to become a tabak. He then shapes one piece with an axe manually to ensure the edges are thin. The next step takes place in the workshop, where he mounts the shaped material on a lathe and begins to turn it, trimming the edges with a curved knife.
The craftsman must ensure the plate is neither too thin nor too thick, rotating it while inserting a pencil at the center to create patterns. Large plates, up to 80 centimeters in diameter, can serve 7-8 people at once, while smaller dishes for children measure about 10 cm. As he teaches his students to craft wooden tableware, the master aims to preserve the ancient trade passed down from his ancestors.