Tuesday 11th March 2025 at The Henley Rugby Club 10.00am - 3.00pm approximately. This has proved immensely popular and will now take place in the large room at the Henley Rugby Club, where we hold our monthly lectures. There is a Waiting List for places for this event. If you wish to put your name down on that , please contact Diana Jones at diana.jones@btinternet.com or on 07799 661459. There are often cancellations, so you might be lucky!
Nevertheless, there is a Waiting List for places for the event. If you wish to put your name down on that , then please contact Diana Jones at diana.jones@btinternet.com or on 07799 661459. There are often cancellations, so you might be lucky!
Chris Aslan
Chris Aslan, who has spent fifteen years living and working in this region, will unravel the strands of this tangled history and embroider them with his own experiences of life in the heart of Asia. Chris will attempt to justify his bold assertion that ‘everything is about textiles’.
Three textile roads tangle their way through Central Asia. The famous Silk Road united east and west through trade. Older still was the Wool Road, of critical importance when houses made of wool enabled nomads to travers the inhospitable winter steppes. Then there was the Cotton Road, marked by greed, colonialism and environmental disaster. At this intersection of human history, fortunes were made and lost through shimmering silks, life giving felts and gossamer cottons.
Thus wool, silk and cotton (pictured above) have each played a crucial role in the fortunes of Central Asia.
Wool created the clothing and housing needed by the great nomadic cultures that were to dominate Middle Asia.
Silk was more valuable than gold and used as currency, creating a network of trading routes that led to the first outbreak of globalisation. Cotton was the cause of Russian and then Soviet Colonisation and continues to cause controversy today as well as human misery and environmental catastrophe.
Afghans travelling to the Pamir Mountains (Afghanistan), site of the ancient Silk Road, c.1800; a 19th-century colour lithography. Photo © North Wind Pictures/Bridgeman Images
(Please click on the blue print above to continue reading)
The felts, carpets, embroideries, robes and veils of the Silk Road stratified wealth, displayed religious and political entrenchments and changed the fortunes of this fascinating part of the world; a meeting place between Mohammed and Marx.
Chris Aslan was born in Turkey (hence the name Aslan) and spent his childhood there and in war-torn Beirut. After school, Chris spent two years at sea before studying Media and journalism at Leicester University. He then moved to Khiva, a desert oasis in Uzbekistan, establishing a UNESCO workshop reviving fifteenth century carpet designs and embroideries, and becoming the largest non-government employer in town. He was kicked out as part of an anti-Western purge, and took a year in Cambridge to write A Carpet Ride to Khiva. Chris then spent several years in the Pamirs mountains of Tajikistan, training yak herders to comb their yaks for their cashmere-like down. Next came a couple more years in Kyrgyzstan living in the world’s largest natural walnut forest and establishing a wood-carving workshop. Since then, Chris has studied and rowed at Oxford, and is now based in Cambridge, but with plans to move to North Cyprus. When he’s not lecturing for The Arts Society, he writes. 
His latest book, Unravelling the Silk Road, is published by Icon Books. Chris also takes tours to Central Asia, returning whenever he can, having left a large chunk of his heart out there.
For more information on this fascinating subject please click on Become an Instant Expert on the Legacy of the Silk Road by Chris Aslan, which was featured by The Arts Society Head Office on 19th June 2023.
