Born and raised in the historic city of Bukhara, Kurbanov is a classically trained artist and master craftsman with over two decades of experience in fine art, miniature painting, and traditional techniques. His artistic journey began at a prestigious seven-year art school affiliated with the Tashkent Academy, where he studied oil painting, watercolor, composition, and art history. He later deepened his practice under the mentorship of an individual master for five years, focusing on miniature painting and watercolor. Kurbanov’s work refracts the influences of his hometown: Persian, Timurid, and Islamic artistic traditions, and carries this lineage with both fidelity and fresh vision.After nearly a decade of working independently, Kurbnov enrolled in university to pursue a degree in fine arts and engineering graphics. In 2023, he was awarded the prestigious DAAD scholarship to study mural restoration and conservation at Fachhochschule Potsdam in Germany. He also exhibited his work in Berlin in 2019.Since 2011, he has run his own workshop in Bukhara, housed in a breath-taking heritage building in what was once a thriving Bukharian ‘madrasa’. Despite the ebb and flow of the tourism industry, he has remained rooted in his craft and community, committed to keeping Bukhara’s artistic legacy alive. This tradition and devotion to the erstwhile emirate’s raison d’etre underpins our shared vision to showcase his work through a partnership with Chouqduff to an audience within a well trodden stop of the Silk Road in Arabia, with much of his work explicitly paying tribute to the practice of transmitting heritage through travel. Kurbanov is a devoted husband and father of two young children, and continues to live and work in the city where his creative journey began.
Meet our fellow travelers in craft and devotion
Spotlight on: Master Firuz Kurbanov
Patchwork legacies: the hands behind the kurak
For centuries, the art of patchwork has been a language of connection across the Islamic world. From the silk ikats and suzanis of Central Asia to the quilted robes of Anatolia and the appliqué textiles of Arabia, women have used remnants of fabric to create garments that preserve both resourcefulness and memory; a map of lived experience.
In Central Asia, this tradition evolved into a craft known as Kurak (also called Qorakoʻz in Uzbek), meaning “assembled from many colors.” Passed from mother to daughter, it transformed fragments of cloth into household quilts, cradle covers, and ceremonial garments. In Bukhara, where Silk Road trade once wove together Persian, Turkic, and Arab influences, Kurak became both a domestic art and a metaphor for unity.
Today, that same spirit lives on in the small ateliers that line Bukhara’s old quarters. The photograph above shows Ms. Sara gul Ravshanova, a fourth generation seamstress working beneath an image of Makkah; a gentle reminder that craft and faith have always been intertwined. On her finger rests a small digital ‘tasbih’ counter, the same finger that guides the needle through cloth for abayas soon to journey to Arabia, the land of the image above her work station to which she prostrates five times a day. In this poignant imagery, her hands become the meeting point where prayer quite literally marries craftsmanship and cultural connectivity - and above all, where garment is its own kind of worship.
Here Ravshanova can be seen photographed with one of Chouqduff’s co-founders, proudly donning a Kurak (patchwork) abaya; part of the four kaleidoscope collections on offer at Chouqduff that celebrate cultural intersection and women’s creative labor.
