Merry Chaumos!
Apologies for the lack of posts over the last three months. I have been busy with financing the company and pushing through an order from the factory, so very little interesting to report!
I thought instead I would give a little update about what is happening among the Kalasha who live in Chitral, the region where our cloth is from.
The Kalasha follow a unique and ancient faith. They celebrate seasonal festivals linked to the solstices, much like our pre-Christian ancestors did (that is for those of us who live in Europe).
In the Kalash Valleys a few days ago the Chaumos celebrations drew to a close. The most important festival of the Kalasha calendar, Chaumos celebrates the winter solstice and prepares the Kalasha for the year to come.
Below is a drawing I made during Chaumos in 2008, it is of a young Kalasha friend who has a cold. He is tucked up in bed, with the traditional remedy of burnt goat horn applied to his face.
Here is a clip of some film which I shot on the same trip. It records the special dough flocks and their shepherd that are made in one of the many rituals carried out during Chaumos.
Apologies for the lack of posts over the last three months. I have been busy with financing the company and pushing through an order from the factory, so very little interesting to report!
I thought instead I would give a little update about what is happening among the Kalasha who live in Chitral, the region where our cloth is from.
The Kalasha follow a unique and ancient faith. They celebrate seasonal festivals linked to the solstices, much like our pre-Christian ancestors did (that is for those of us who live in Europe).
In the Kalash Valleys a few days ago the Chaumos celebrations drew to a close. The most important festival of the Kalasha calendar, Chaumos celebrates the winter solstice and prepares the Kalasha for the year to come.
Below is a drawing I made during Chaumos in 2008, it is of a young Kalasha friend who has a cold. He is tucked up in bed, with the traditional remedy of burnt goat horn applied to his face.
This clip records the grinding of walnuts which make up the filing for a special bread baked during Chaumos. Traditionally the walnuts are processed in a pestle and mortar, but the family I stayed with were experimenting with a newly bough mechanical grinder from the market.
This last clip records another Chaumos ritual, the drawing of stylised markhor on the Gestakhan temple. Markhor are a magnificent variety of mountain goat with spectacular corkscrew horns. In the Kalasha cosmology markhor are amongst the purist of creatures, shepherded by the pure spirits of the high mountains.
