Usta Shirin Murodov

Usta Shirin Murodov was born on 18 August 1880 in Bukhara into a family of craftsmen. He learned the trade from his father, Usta Murod, and his grandfather, Usta Nosir, and from his youth trained under his uncle, Usta Hayot.

As an independent master he took part in decorating the Emir of Bukhara’s palace at Karmana and the White Hall of the Sitorai Mohi Xossa summer residence, built and ornamented in the 1910s; this work made his name. In ganch carving he developed the traditional methods, gave them new forms and was among the first to use a mirror as the ground of a pattern.

In the Soviet period he also worked in Tashkent, decorating clubs and administrative buildings with carved ganch. In 1938 he contributed to the Uzbek SSR and Turkmen SSR pavilions at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, and later worked on the Tashkent clock tower, the Muqimi Theatre and the Alisher Navoi Museum of Literature.

His largest commission was the Bukhara Hall of the Navoi Opera and Ballet Theatre in Tashkent: its carved panels, ceiling panels and cornices were finished in 1947, and in 1948 they earned him the Stalin Prize, first class. In 1943 he was named Honoured Art Worker of the Uzbek SSR and elected an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR; on 16 January 1950 he received the Order of Lenin, and he also held the Order of the Red Banner of Labour and medals.

Usta Shirin took part in restoring monuments: he rebuilt the damaged part of the Samanid Mausoleum, the domes of the Mir-i Arab and Abdulaziz Khan madrasas, and the tile ornament of the portal of the Magoki Attori Mosque. He taught at the Samarkand school of restorers, the Tashkent school of building art (1940–1942), a Moscow art college (1942–1943) and the Benkov Republican Art College (1952–1957), and trained many pupils.

He died on 12 February 1957 in Tashkent and was buried in the Chigatay cemetery. Streets and schools in Tashkent and Bukhara bear his name, and his bust stands in the courtyard of Sitorai Mohi Xossa. In 2001 he was posthumously awarded the Order “Buyuk xizmatlari uchun”.