Uzbekistan Arts & Crafts Glossary

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

   Greetings again from Samarkand.
   This city is wonderfully free of those pesky American tourists.  The sound & light show last night was in German...The drinks are Coke (no Diet Coke), Fanta, Sprite, and hot tea.  No ice(d) tea, rare orange juice and coffee at breakfast but no Starbucks...This vacation is inexpensive, but there are large amounts of touristic-interest places.  Maybe the lack of crowds is a good thing.
   I don't know how the OED madrassah/madrassa/madrasah/medressa revision is going, but the 1600s is a bit off.  The central square here has one from 1420.

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CHESS

   In the 1970s, I heard that the Soviets discovered chess pieces in Uzbekistan.  It's taken me that long to come here.  I haven't seen any chess pieces--or boards--so far, although there was a chess board design in a Zoroastrian tomb from 999 A.D. at Bukhara.
   I'll visit the Tashkent museum in two days.

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ATLAS OF CENTRAL ASIAN
ARTISTIC CRAFTS AND TRADES
Volume I--Uzbekistan
International Institute for Central Asian Studies, Samarkand
Chief Editorial Office of Publishing & Printing
Concern "Sharq"
Hardcover, 223 pages (all in English!--ed.)
Tashkent 1999

   This book is sold all over.  I haven't seen a Volume II anywhere.

Pg. 185:
APPENDIX II
GLOSSARY OF TERMS OF ARTISTIC HANDICRAFTS
..
maraka lyagan--a dish for ritual measure
maraka shokosa--a bowl with low round support
mashadi bodiya--a small bowl with vertical edges
mashrafa--a vase
miyona tovok--a middle-sized dish
moy kuza--a pitcher for oil

Pg. 187:
madokhil--literally "enter into each other", complicated vegetable geometric design...

(The Glossary continues until page 194.  Hundreds of wonderful terms--some with overlap for other Central Asian countries.  OED should snap it up.  Again, when I last checked the online OED for "Uzbekistan," only four words came up, with "Uzbek" one of the four--ed.)