The Sitorai Mokhi Khosa Applied Art Museum
The Sitorai Mokhi Khosa Applied Art Museum
4 kilometers north from Bukhara, along the Gidjuvan-led road, on the side of the Samarkand gates, there is a wonderful out-of-town summer palace named Sitorai Mokhi Khosa which belonged to the dynasty of the last Bukhara's Emirs (the palace resembles stars and the moon). The first facilities of the palace were built during the reign of Emir Nasrullokhan (1826-1860).
The main structures of the summer palace were being built in the years of power of Mir Sayyid Alimkhan. the last Emir of Bukhara (1911-1920). The palace is divided into the new and the old parts. The official reception room of the new palace is performed as «П». The palace's northern side has a high terrace that is named «salomkhona» (greeting room); in the northern and eastern parts of the palace there are «ziyofatlar zali» (sitting-room), «kutish zali* (waiting room), «takhthona» (throne room), «khazinakhona» (Treasury). Such famous in those times craftsmen as Khsanjon Umarov. Abdullo Gafurov. Rakhim Khayotov. Ibrahim Khafizov, Karim Samadov, usto (master) Jura - expert in woodworking, usto Khodjakul and the famous master in ganch usto Shirin Muradov (1880-1957).
Among other halls of the palace it is the Throne hall (Khonai safed - white room) that is distinguished by especially magnificent interior. It represents one of the most wonderful samples of artistic architecture of the beginning of the 20th century.
This work of the ganch expert (ganch-building material with gypsum as the main component) usto Shirin Muradov (usto means craftsman) is one his best artistic achievements.
The 2nd day of September 1920 has gone down to history as the day of the fall of the Bukhara Emirate and the establishment of the Soviet Power (already former). It was the end of the last independent state in Central Asia. The Bukhara People's Soviet Republic was established (BPSR). The official residence of the BPSR was located in the Sitorai Mokhi Khosa Palace and it was planned to create just over there a separate museum. In this regard the Central Asian committee on museums and architectural monuments of arts and nature (CACMA) not once addressed to the Government of Uzbekistan to make a museum on the basis of this antique monument. The appeal was as follows.
Then the Government gave the Sitorai Mokhi Khosa Palace at the disposal of the CACMA. It was recommended to pay a special attention to the matter of creating a museum complex with the Palace.
Unfortunately the elements of interior of the palace turned to have been plundered up. that is why it was impossible to restore the original arrangement (household goods, pottery, utensils) of the palace. After the 1917 revolt the property of the palace was requisitioned and distributed among various organizations. This resulted in the fact that it became impossible to give the Sitorai Mokhi Khosa palace its original view. In 1927 in the main
residence of the palace an open museum exposition, bearing the name: «The Life of the Last Emirs* was organized. It consisted of three sections. Articles of town craftsmen, the history of Bukhara revolution and sketches from emirs' life were on display. The exhibition gave very limited information about the life of the former Oriental rulers. The section «Town handicrafts* very widely presents articles of jewelers, potters, gold-embroiders and tinkers. The technique of the exhibition was so primitive that it was arranged on the principle of show-window and shops.
The exhibition «The Life of the Last Emirs» was the beginning of the first branch museum of local lore in the Zeravshan viloyat. In spite of serious defects in its organization the opening of the exhibition-museum had a great significance. One of this museum's organizers was Bukhara-born Musadjan Saidjanov, (1893-1937) -first Uzbek scientist of local lore. His works as «Recollections about Samarkand Architectural Monuments*, «The credentials of Sheikh Sayfiddin Bokharziy» have not lost their value even now. Like Abdurauf Fitrat, Chulpan. Fayzulla Khodjaev, Akmal Ikramov, Abdulla Kadiri and many other patriots. M.Saidjanov was subject to repression as «enemy of the people* and killed.
In 1933 the Bukhara museum received the status of the «local lore inter-regional museum* and due to this fact its exposition was reviewed, and the exhibition of its branch - Sitorai Mokhi Khossa - was rearranged anew. This exhibition functioned till 1947.
Time and society development had required cardinal changes to be done in the museum expositions. The fully renovated exhibition of the Sitorai Mokhi Khosa branch museum by the years of 1948-50 was known as «Folk Art of Bukhara*. The exhibition consisted of the following sections: ^Monumental arts of Bukhara*. «Applied Art*, «Folk musical art*. «Calligraphy and miniature arts* and « «Cultural ties between Bukhara and nearby brother Republics*.
By the middle of the 50s of the last century, especially in 1954, when a departmental rest home for Soviet trade union workers was opened within the palace, there appeared a risk of complete destruction of the Sitorai Mokhi Khosa museum.
Spiritual poverty, shortsightedness and illiteracy of the representative of the former Soviet power have become an unforgivable cause for the traceless disappearance of the only one in Central Asia palace-museum, a number of its pavilions, its flora and fauna together with priceless monuments of the past.
From all the Sitorai Mokhi Khosa complex-museum it was only the «Folk Arts Museum». consisting of 9 main halls, that preserved its view die to tremendous effort that had been applied.
Being changed in terms of components the exposition of that museum had existed till the middle of 1970. The year of 1975 witnessed a creation of «The Museum of Folk Applied Arts of Bukhara* within the Sitorai Mokhi Khosa palace.
In its eight sections there were collected the articles of decorative needleworkers, potters, jewelers, embroiders in gold, cloth-printers, wood-carvers, the porcelain items by Chinese and Japanese craftsmen.
The museum exposition consisting of the property and adornments of the palace mainly demonstrated the mastership of craftsmen.
More than 100 types of Palace's furniture and utensils after being used and worn-out within the palace itself and in various institutions in 1989 were returned to the museum and then sent for restoration to the central scientific restoration shop in Tashkent. Most of them were restored and came back to complete the exposition of the museum. In the main residence of the palace, in its 8 halls, there were presented articles of embroiders in gold, jewelers, moulders, and the palace's furniture, dear jewelry (souvenirs), porcelain from China and Japan.
After Uzbekistan's independence there appeared a possibility to enlarge the Sitorai Mokhi Khosa museum. Within one of the most beautiful structures of the palace - «Khonai Khasht» (room with 8 corners) - an exhibition pavilion of «The Museum of the National Clothing of Bukhara in the 19th-20th Centuries* was made. It vividly demonstrated a unique coloring of Bukhara's costumes.
In the southern part of the palace's garden, on the bank of a large lake, faced with marble, a two-story building is located in which the servants used to live. In this building after its restoration the museum «The Museum of Bukhara's Embroidery and Utensils* was opened. More than 250 articles were presented in this museum demonstrating a unique mastership of embroideress from Bukhara, Shahrisabs, Samarkand and potters from Gizhduvan. Among them were samples of chinaware made especially for Central Asia in the factories of the Kuznetsov brothers and of Garner.
In one of the building's bedrooms an ethnographic exhibition of Bukhara town-dweller's interior was arranged. A bed, traditional house utensils, musical instruments. «beshik» (wooden cradle). «sandal» (room stove made in the ground) were on display there.
According to authentic archive data, apart from the articles plundered and confiscated during the former Soviets in 1928-1984. there are thousands of jewelry relics and 2,264 names of different unique items and articles left nonrecoverable since they were distributed among various museums and institutions of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Ivanov and were gifted out as souvenirs. Since 1996 only 540 names have been returned to the stocks of the museum.
Of lately the exposition of the «Folk Applied Arts* museum at the Sitorai Mokhi Khosa complex-museum has been notably enlarged and enriched. After the building of the palace's harem had been reconstructed, an ethnographical museum of the peoples of Bukhara was established there. Restoration work was performed on the Palace orchard's area of 6 hectares as a result of which a fortress's wall, pavilions, the former flora and fauna have been restored. The Sitorai Mokhi Khosa complex-museum is supposed to become in the nearest future the most popular museum among our and foreign visitors.