Museum of Applied Arts and Everyday Life of Khorezm

Khorezm is a storehouse of architectural monuments, most of which are located within the walls of Ichan Kala, which bounded the inner city. The heyday of architecture and construction in the city occurred during the reign of the Kungrat dynasty. So, during the reign of the eleventh ruler from this dynasty, Mukhammad Rakhim Khan II, the Kazi Kalyan madrasah was built.

Kazi Kalyan Madrasah was built in 1905, in the center of Ichan Kala, on the initiative and at the expense of the chief judge of the city, Muhammad Salim Akhund. Secular and religious sciences have been taught in the madrasah for a long time.

Currently, the Museum of Applied Arts and Everyday life of Khorezm is located in the building of the Kazi Kalyan madrasah. The museum's exposition presents work whose creation dates back to the XVIII-XIX centuries, and there are also relatively new exhibits created in the XX century.

The museum's visitors are presented numerous works of jewelry made in the characteristic Khorezm style, handmade carpets, ceramic products, wood and stone carvings, and copper-stamped products.

You can also find a characteristic Khorezm artistic ornament on ceramics, which includes not geometric and floral drawings, like the style of Bukhara and Samarkand, but quite specific images. Khorezm ceramics flourished in the XIX century.  The ceramic products of Khorezm are decorated with drawings of musical instruments, knives, jugs and other objects. The main part of the ceramic exhibition is represented by the works of famous masters such as usto Allakor, usto Yusupkulol and Iskander Kalantarov. All products are made mainly in different shades of green, which is one of the signs of the Khorezm style.

In addition, the Khorezm masters had their own style in the decoration of metals. Ornaments on teapots, jugs, trays, cauldrons contained lines from poems, and sometimes whole quatrains.

The works of products decorated with wood carvings, made by the hand of one of the best masters, the national master of Uzbekistan, a wood carver, Ata Palvanov, are presented.

The Museum of Applied Arts and Everyday Life of Khorezm is not ancient, however, despite this, products made by folk craftsmen always attract the attention of tourists.