Cards of Asia - Turkmenistan

This is an aristocratic married Turkmen woman. Unmarried aristocratic girls would traditionally wear a cap with bells and all kinds of fancy stuff on it. Originally I was going to do the fancy cap, 2 girls actually. One wearing a normal cap and the other wearing a fancy one. However, this one seemed a lot more elegant and I liked it a lot more. The composition was just off before and I hated the drawing so, yeah. Turkmen women don’t really dress like this anymore, however, sometimes they walk around [in this traditional-ish dress linked here]. Men have these big ol' hats called a Telpek hat which is used throughout Central Asia and the Caucasus. I love that hat, its big, fluffy and looks like an afro. They are worn all year over a skullcap. Black ones are worn everyday and white ones are usually only worn on special occasions. Men also wear wound turbans. Women wear a skullcap, tie their hair back in a scarf, or wear hijab. Turkmen women and men today love having gold teeth because it shows status, it’s not just them who like that, Uzbeks and Kazakhs use them as a status symbol as well.

If you like my work, consider buying me a [coffee]! 

Also please note that yurts have wooden doors I just forgot to draw them like a FOOL. But yeah. The doors are nice, carved pretty, especially the aristocratic ones.

Since I honestly don’t know that much about Turkmenistan and there isn’t a lot written about it (that I can trust is true) I had a hard time deciding the topic for this card. The info I could find was lacking so this will be short.

Rugs. The Turkmen love their rugs. Actually, so do a lot of peoples in that whole area Eastern Europe/Central Asia and down to the Middle East (which is still Asia). I think it’s funny that you can kinda track the Silk Road by rug lovers, most of the places it passed through have a big thing about them. Anywho, rugs. So, the Turkmen are a fully nomadic tribe and they used the rugs to differentiate between clans, classes and families. During the Soviet rule of Turkmenistan, rug production became a huge part of the economy. Rugs were and are still made and sold mainly to Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. Rugs are such a big thing there that they even have a carpet museum in Ashgabat, the countries capital, which hosts the world’s largest carpet. They are very proud of it. Nowadays carpets aren’t really used for their original purpose, the making of rugs became mechanized and for economic gain. There is a worry that younger generations of Turkmen will no longer know how to make fully authentic rugs due to this shift. 

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