Meet the Women Artisans Keeping Kyrgyzstan’s Traditional Art of Felting Alive

You could be forgiven for assuming Aliman Esenalieva is overheated. The 60-year-old textile artisan is sitting cross-legged on the floor of a felted yurt on a sweltering 90-degree June day just outside Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital. It is high noon. There is no A/C. Not a fan in sight. And she is putting the finishing touches on an intricate felted seat cover—meaning she’s not only sitting in a yurt covered in felt, she also has a substantial piece of wool draped across her lap.

Yet despite all signs pointing to the contrary, Esenalieva actually feels quite cool and comfortable. Peaceful, even. This is no accident, nor is it a surprise (at least to her). As a longtime employee of Tumar Art Group, a traditional felting collective founded by Kyrgyz entrepreneur Chinara Makashova and her aunt Roza Makashova in 1998, Esenalieva is deeply familiar with the heat-regulating power of felt. Made by compressing wool fibers using only soap, water, and friction, the material doesn’t just keep you warm in the winter. It can keep you cool in the summertime, too, when crafted the right way. But spend some time chatting with Esenalieva and her fellow Tumar artisans, as I did during a weeklong trip earlier this summer, and you’ll quickly realize that the power of traditional Kyrgyz felt also extends far beyond temperature control. Today, the material has taken on new meaning as a symbol of cultural pride in the decades following Kyrgyzstan’s independence from the Soviet Union. And it’s women who are leading the change.

Kyrgyzstan is a small, landlocked, and incredibly beautiful country in Central Asia. While the terrain of many of its neighbors, including Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, is defined by flat plains, the country is made up of more than 95% mountains—mostly the vast (and very lush) Tian Shan range. This has led many Western travel writers to describe it as the “Switzerland of the East,” citing its alpine lakes, wildflower-filled meadows, glacial rivers, and high-altitude pastures dotted with horses and sheep.

Given the abundance of sheep in particular, it’s no surprise that Kyrgyz people spent centuries as largely nomadic sheep herders. Back then, their lifestyle was inherently sustainable, as they relied on what the land and animals provided, wasted nothing, and crafted much of what they needed using felt, which is made without any chemicals or synthetic additives. Nomadic Kyrgyz people used this all-natural material to line the floors and walls of their yurts (i.e. their portable, dome-shaped homes), make their clothing, and craft everyday items like rugs, saddlebags, and seat covers. There’s even an expression in Kyrgyzstan that Kyrgyz people are “born on the felt and die on the felt,” rooted in the idea that their entire lives—from birth to death—once unfolded on felt-covered yurt floors.

Perhaps most notable of all? It was always women, never men, who kept the felting tradition alive, passing the techniques and symbolic patterns down orally from mother to daughter through the generations. Traditional Kyrgyz designs tend to favor swirling curves over sharp corners, for example, reflecting the belief that pointed angles attract negative energy. Some of them are also thought to invite blessings, like prosperity and fertility. They are typically mirrored and symmetrical, too, an expression of the core Kyrgyz belief in harmony. This philosophy of balance is more officially known as Tengri or Tengrism, an ancient spiritual tradition built on the nomadic principle that everything in nature—earth and sky, light and dark, spirit and body—must exist in perfect equilibrium.

But during Soviet rule, from 1917 to the fall of the USSR in 1991, many Kyrgyz cultural traditions like these were gradually sidelined in the pursuit of industrialization. As the country modernized, nomadic lifestyles were largely replaced with more settled, urbanized ways of living—so the symbolism woven into felting designs began to hold less significance in everyday life. The craft was still preserved, to an extent, through state-run folklore programs and cultural institutions, as well as through oral tradition, passed down from mother to daughter (especially those who lived in rural villages). But the focus was typically more on the technique itself than the tradition’s deeper cultural meaning.

Now, over the past couple decades, Kyrgyzstan has experienced a cultural revival of sorts, one rooted in the desire to both define and honor what it truly means to be Kyrgyz today. And traditional felting is at its heart. “After we gained independence, people started to think, ‘Why have we been associating ourselves with Russians? We are not Russian. We are Kyrgyz. But who and what is Kyrgyz?’ So we started the process of self-identification,” Nazgul Esenbaeva, the commercial director of Tumar Art Group—the felting collective where Aliman Esenalieva works—told me on my trip. This self-identification process unfolded over the next 10 to 15 years, and today, many Kyrgyz people have a clearer sense of who they are and what’s distinctly their own. “[Kyrgyz is] our mother tongue,” Nazgul continued. “Our nature. Our folk music. Our national dress and cuisine. And our art. Our traditional folk arts and crafts.”

Indeed, in 2012, shyrdak and ala-kiyiz rugs (two types of traditional Kyrgyz felt carpet) were both inscribed on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding. And then, in 2019, ak-kalpaks (traditional white felt hats worn by Kyrgyz men) were added, too, followed by elechek (traditional female headwear) in 2023. Top Kyrgyz designers in high-end fashion have also started to incorporate traditional felting motifs into their modern luxury apparel. Pieces by renowned textile designer Aidai Asangulova, whose advocacy helped earn the UNESCO recognition for Kyrgyz felting traditions, are especially sought after these days for their modern twist on traditional silk and felt.

But of course their popularity isn’t just about the felt. When is the felt ever just about the felt? It’s about a feeling more than anything else, Nazgul told me. “Wearing felt and making felt today is about knowing it was made in Kyrgyzstan. It’s about saying: ‘This is part of our identity. This is us.’”

When she was growing up during Soviet rule, she used to help her grandmother make rugs at home. But she found the wool to be really itchy, and she didn’t value the process—because the process itself wasn’t as valued back then as it is today. “I saw felting as just a routine, something I had to do to help my grandmother,” she recalled. All that started to change when she traveled to Japan during college just a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and saw that people there actually valued their traditional arts and crafts. “So when I came back from Japan, I thought, ‘Why are we not valuing our craft like they are?’ We have our own heritage, too. Our own legacy.” That’s when she started to appreciate traditional Kyrgyz felt for the first time. And then, as if by magic, her wool allergy seemed to just… disappear.

Coincidence? Possibly. But unlikely. As with many things in life, there is a strong emotional component here that simply cannot be ignored.

“Felting was undervalued in Kyrgyzstan for so long… I didn’t appreciate it. But once I started paying attention to it, I began to feel peaceful just by touching it,” Nazgul told me. “And now, felting is one of the great loves of my life. I’m so proud to continue the generational traditions. Proud to promote Kyrgyz culture through my work.”

Photo: Clémence Polès

Chinara Makashova has been at the forefront of this cultural celebration from the start, long before it was even recognized as a celebration at all. She was just 26 years old when she co-founded Tumar in 1998. But back then, she wasn’t really thinking about felt as a symbol of cultural pride. No, she saw it as a way to survive. A means to an end. The Soviet Union had fallen just a few years prior, and with it, many of the stable industrial jobs it had provided. Times were tough, and her family was struggling to make ends meet under the new market economy. Her mother had lost her job, as had her aunt Roza eje (the respectful way to refer to elders in Kyrgyz culture). Many people of that era missed the stability they’d known under Soviet rule. So when her uncle invited her to work with him at his souvenir shop, it was an obvious yes. And that’s when she saw an entrepreneurial opportunity. There seemed to be a big demand for traditional Kyrgyz crafts and gifts, she told me in Russian through a translator during my visit, but not a big supply—because people weren’t really making anything locally anymore.

“After the fall of the Soviet Union, production essentially stopped in Kyrgyzstan, so everyone rushed to import clothes and other goods,” Chinara recalled. “They started bringing in items from abroad, mainly from China, in order to make money quickly. And that’s when I realized I could create the supply myself to meet the demand.” As an economics major, she also understood that making goods with local materials like felt was a relatively low lift. She already had access to the sheep, after all, not to mention some older women in the community who still remembered the various techniques their mothers had passed down. She figured she could ask them to guide her along.

It was a smart move. Today, Tumar is thriving. Chinara and her aunt Roza Eje, now 54 and 66, respectively, own and operate two felting factories, with plans in place to (hopefully) build a third. They employ 220 people—around 80% of them women—and pay them good, fair wages. This is notable for a country where low wages are the norm (about 31% of the country’s GDP comes from migrant workers working abroad and sending the money home), but they are able to do it in large part because of their strict quality control. To make felt in the best and most authentic way possible, workers must do as their nomadic ancestors did: pick out the twigs, pieces of grass, and other natural bits from the sheep’s wool by hand, using tweezers and razors, then roll and press it with water and friction until it fuses into dense fabric. This is an incredibly time-consuming task, especially the tweezers and razors part, which is why many factory workers throughout the country tend to rush through this process—or skip it altogether. “Using natural threads like we do takes a lot more time than using acrylic threads from other countries, which is what a lot of other local craftspeople do,” Nazgul told me over dinner one night. “But doing it the traditional way is how we honor our culture.” Plus, she added, crafting felt the traditional way makes the products more durable, which enables them to position their goods better on the international market.

Tumar’s primary buyer is Kyrgies, a slipper brand based out of Richmond, Virginia that specializes in sustainable, ethically sourced, felted slippers and accessories. It was the quality of the felt itself that initially drew Kyrgies founder Barclay Saul to partner with Tumar as his main supplier. “As soon as we tried the slippers on, we knew they were a special product,” he told me over a roaring campfire at a yurt camp in the Tian Shan mountains. But it wasn’t just the comfort that appealed to him. He was also drawn to how naturally sustainable they were. Because traditional Kyrgyz felting doesn’t use any synthetics, nearly all of Kyrgies’ products are biodegradable. Their customers love that about them, along with the coziness factor and the connection to Kyrgyz culture they represent. “Kyrgies has spread by word-of-mouth more than anything else, because people really love everything about the slippers—not least the story of the felt,” Saul continued.

Indeed, for him, working with Tumar is as much about supporting a women-founded, owned and operated business doing its part to keep Kyrgyz artistic heritage alive as it is about the slippers themselves. And in the end, that may just be what matters most to Chinara and the rest of the women at Tumar, too. What started out as a financial business decision—a way for her to support herself during difficult times—has ultimately evolved into a powerful form of cultural preservation. “When Roza and I first started Tumar, we just wanted to blend into the world. To survive. But now, as Kyrgyz people, we are trying to stand out,” Chinara told me one afternoon after showing me around one of the Tumar factories. “We are trying to celebrate what makes us different in this world. And the felting process gives us the strength to do that—because it connects us to our roots. It helps us feel proud to be from here. This is our culture. It is part of us. It is part of who we are.”