Talks & Lectures

 

An Evening of Talks

Wednesday 7th April, 6.30pm, Gallery One, Emirates Palace 

Embroidery: A Women’s Story

Isabelle Denamur, exhibition curator and embroidery expert

The meanings of embroideries go beyond the sophisticated techniques visible on embroidered objects and textiles. Contemporary and ancient photos and paintings showing women at home and in society reveal how embroideries, present in women’s everyday lives whether under the form of the scarf they wear to the hammam or the time they spend creating pieces - provide us with a mean to a better understanding of the discrete and secretive world of women.  


Central Asia through the Camera Lens

Andrew Hale, co-author of exhibition catalogue and a specialist of international photography

Vintage photographs bring to life the world of 19th and early 20th century urban Central Asia. This richly illustrated talk takes us from the court of the Emir to the magnificent architecture of Samarkand and Bukhara, then into the streets of the bazaars, filled with merchants, artisans, and entertainers, and finally into the walled compounds of private homes for an intimate portrait of Central Asian family life. Antique photographs, largely taken by colonial Russian photographers, are a valuable research tool for identifying and dating textiles and other crafts. Even more, they help us to understand the changing view of this exotic world through the eyes of photographers and artists from the earliest colonial documentation to the creative experiments of the avant-garde.


Uzbek and Turkoman Steppe Embroidery

Kate Fitz-Gibbon, co-author of the exhibition catalogue and an attorney specializing in international art and cultural heritage law

A colourful slide lecture introducing two pastoralist steppe peoples with strikingly different artistic approaches to embroidery.One group, the Turkoman, which is most famous for its luxurious carpet production.Among the Turkoman, embroidery is a highly personal, non-commercial art used primarily to embellish traditional women and children’s clothing. Embroidered garments celebrate the transition from adolescence to motherhood, protect family members from illness and ensure children’s health and emotional well-being.In comparison, the Lakai and Kungrat Uzbek use embroidery to decorate the place of honour in the yurt and to celebrate their origins as warrior horseman. Lakai embroidery is especially individual and creative, with many of the artistic strengths associated with abstract, modern art. In both traditions, embroidery is not only considered a high art, but also a means of protecting family members from evil influences, enhancing religious and ritual traditions, and maintaining community identity.


Conservation, Care and Politics

Kitty Morris, textile conservator

Conservation, care and politics raises many important factors of collections management and care, in particular preventative conservation and the result of failure. Kitty Morris covers a wide range of issues from the ethical questions that surround conservation to the more practical considerations of creating microenvironments and designing disaster plans. In principle, preventative conservation is simply a matter of monitoring and controlling the main agents of destruction: light, inappropriate relative humidity, atmospheric pollutants, handling and transport, and poor storage. However, what are the consequences of unforeseen disasters? Kitty Morris speaks of her life in stitches and the obstacles for the conservation of humanity.

Maghreb Embroidery as a Cultural and Personal Expression

Dr. Françoise Cousin, Former head of the textile department, Musée du quaiBranly, Paris, France

Embroidery plays a vital role in the textile processes; performed on an already woven surface, and sometimes on an already stitched piece of dress, it gives place for personal creation inside a cultural background.This lecture studies how, with their hands and threads, the embroiderers of Maghreb produce specific patterns within textiles that are unique to their cultural identity. Studies of their creations will be compared with other embroidery traditions to demonstrate the telling nature of the textile world, and how one may learn of cultural heritage and identity from stitches and threads.

An Evening of Talks

Thursday 27th May, 6.30pm, Gallery One, Emirates Palace

Medieval Islamic Embroideries in the French Public Collections

Manon Six, curator of Medieval Art and Islamic Art, Agence France-Muséums

Embroidery was a highly developed textile art in the Islamic world, not only used to create patterns, but to inscribe garments sometimes ordered by high-ranking people. Examples of these so-called tiraztextiles are important evidences for the art of writing, as well as for the technique itself. The finest of the embroideries were made in specialist textile workshops. Covering more than 1000 years, they were culturally part of late Antiquity, early Christianity, and medieval Islamic Egypt or Syria, later from Spain. Most of them in the collections are today fragmentary and rarely exhibited, because of strict conservation reasons; leaving samples of dress items or domestic furnishings that are mainly silk embroidered on a linen ground fabric, with many different stitch techniques. Looking at these textile fragments rather than complete cloths invites a different way of seeing where there is more concentration on the details of patterns and techniques. It is possible that some of these fine examples were imported to Italy via trade and became the basis for the development of the technique and the circulation of the patterns in Europe.

From a Private Collection to a Public Museum: The Riboud Collection at the Guimet Museum, Paris

Vincent Lefevre, curator of Asian Arts, Agence France-Muséums

Started in the 1950s, the collection gathered by Krishna Riboud (1926-2000) had become, by the end of the 20th century, the most comprehensive and extent collections of Asian textiles in private hands, as well as a research centre open to scholars from around the world. Because of her strong links with the Guimet Museum, the French National Museum for Asian Arts, Krishna Riboud had decided that her collection should be given to it. This presentation will introduce the content and the history of this fascinating collection; at the same time, it will address issues related to display and preservation of textiles in a museum.

Embroidered Ethnographic Textiles and Costumes in the Collection of the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar

Konstantinos Chatziantoniou, textile conservator, Museum of Islamic Art, Qatar

The group of ethnographic embroideries found in the collection of the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, was purchased not as a collection but as individual pieces based mostly on their suggested importance. The lack of art historical information accompanying these objects forced the textile conservator to explore the provenance and attribution of these textiles when he began the survey of this collection.This presentation will present the design, problems and possible solutions in dealing with ethnographic research of Islamic embroidered fabrics and costumes in the Museum of Islamic Art. The aim of the conservator is to create an accurate documentation record of these traditional pieces and development of a terminology database of embroidery techniques found in the Arab world. Chatziantoniou suggests that developing such a database and to accurately survey the textile collection is necessary for assessment and future preservation and conservation of this collection. The collection of historical information and comparative review and evaluation of the condition of these textiles was initiated in order to fill gaps in their curriculum, since these embroideries, whilst constituting a major part of the modern Arab culture often are overshadowed by masterpieces of the Islamic textile and embroidery art of the past.

Lecture: Threads of History: Embroidered and Woven Textiles of the Abbasid and Fatimid Caliphates

Thursday 17th June, 6.30pm, Gallery One, Emirates Palace

Dr. Jochen Sokoly, assistant professor in Art History, gallery director at Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar

Jochen Sokoly’s lecture focuses on a group of inscribed textiles from Egypt and the Central and Eastern Islamic lands commonly known as tiraztextiles. The term tiraz, although subject to some scholarly debate, refers to an inscription that contains historical content referring to an official commission by an Islamic ruler or one of his representatives. It usually lists the name of the ruler, and his titles, as well as administrative information relating to the object’s manufacture. They are usually embroidered or woven in silk or wool on linen or cotton. It is the historical content of these textile inscriptions, which makes them a valuable resource for historical research into the caliphal administration of the early Islamic period. Apart from the content of the inscriptions this group of textiles is furthermore significant archaeologically, as they can offer a glimpse into the life, but also burial practices of the early Islamic period in Egypt and other parts of the Islamic World.