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  • Interwoven histories

    Interwoven histories

    Financial Times; Jul 15, 2006
    By Peter Aspden

    The chic streets that surround the Victoria and Albert Museum in South
    Kensington are not short of expensive shops selling exotic carpets and
    fabrics from the east; but here, in the museum's new Jameel Gallery
    of Islamic Art, is one that makes all those others look like tawdry
    camel rugs. The Ardabil carpet, the world's oldest dated carpet from
    1539, is the proud centrepiece of the gallery: 50 sq m of subtle hues
    and exquisite craftsmanship, encased in a brilliant new display that
    finally puts it where it belongs - on the floor.

    A specially created case, made with non-reflective glass and hung
    low from the ceiling by numerous strands, deliberately echoing the
    pendulous effect of lanterns in a mosque, gives the Iranian carpet
    its best-ever public showcase; it has always previously hung on the
    wall. Little is known for certain about its origins, says Tim Stanley,
    the museum's senior Middle East curator, but it was admired by no less
    a figure than William Morris, who considered it "the finest eastern
    carpet which I have seen... of singular perfection, defensible on
    all points, logically and consistently beautiful". Morris urged the
    museum to buy it from a London dealer for the hefty sum of £2,000 in
    1893. Today it is priceless. It will be lit for visitors for just 10
    minutes every half hour, to preserve its original colours.

    The Jameel Gallery, designed by the architects Softroom, opens
    this week with a sharp sense of purpose. Not only does it aim to
    improve public understanding of a culture that many westerners have
    misunderstood, prejudged or underrated; it also focuses on the fact
    that Islam was always more than a religion. "What we have gathered
    here is the art of the Islamic empire and its successor states,"
    says Stanley. "And not everyone was a Muslim in that empire. People
    get the wrong idea - for example they think there are no images in
    Islamic art, which is not true."

    The sections of the gallery that are dedicated to secular items show
    an art that reflects a highly sophisticated court milieu, where
    "un-Islamic" activities such as astrology, dancing to music and
    drinking wine are lavishly portrayed. "It is imagined that the Middle
    East was in some way cut off from the rest of the world, whereas it
    was the very centre of so many cultural exchanges," says Stanley. At
    the same time, it was the religious devotion inspired by Islam that
    enabled the region to resist cosmopolitan influences and keep its
    distinctive identity.

    Many of the fine ceramics on display, for example, were the result of
    trade links with China, where white stoneware was being produced and
    became widely admired; from the Middle East it spread to the west,
    where it became more fashionable still.

    Christianity also played a role in the Islamic empire. The Isfahan
    Cope, a semi-circular church cloak woven in Isfahan, Iran, with the
    dense silk pile used for carpets, features striking images of the
    Annunciation and the Crucifixion. It was produced in the early 17th
    century for an Armenian church. It is a remarkably worked garment,
    its Christian components harmonising with typically Iranian scrollwork
    motifs.

    Cross-fertilisation of this kind was common: a Syrian or Egyptian
    brass chalice from the 13th/14th century is in the Islamic Mamluk
    style, yet is inscribed in Arabic honouring the Christian patron who
    commissioned it, illustrating how local Christians were accommodated
    in the prevailing political system.

    These are perhaps fanciful footnotes to the gallery's main business,
    although one may think that such fruitful examples of multicultural
    synergy are never to be overlooked in the present climate of mutual
    suspicion. The principal constituents of Islamic art - that are
    common to most of the work here - are: an emphasis on calligraphy,
    particularly in the depiction of quotations from the Koran; a rigorous
    geometric style, employing a flat picture plane; the use of plant-based
    motifs, a style that was to become known as "arabesque" in Europe;
    and the occasional appearance of images and extracts from poetry.

    The contentious issue of figural decoration is nowhere better seen than
    in the 14th century tiles that come from a monumental tomb found in
    Natanz in Iran. An inscription in cobalt blue is backed by scrollwork,
    which is inhabited by small birds. Some time before the 19th century,
    when the tiles were removed from the building, the head of each bird
    was carefully chipped off, so that religious sensibilities would no
    longer be affronted.

    The Ardabil carpet is thought to have religious connections precisely
    because of its lack of figurative imagery, in contrast to the so-called
    Chelsea carpet (after the London dealer from whom it was bought),
    another 16th-century masterpiece, adorned with animals either grazing
    or in combat, and clearly for secular use.

    But the Jameel Gallery, dedicated to the memory of his parents by
    Mohammed Jameel, president and chief executive of the Abdul Latif
    Jameel Group, does not only tell the story of Islamic art; it is
    also an insight into British cultural history. Interest in Islamic
    ornament was a by-product of the Great Exhibition of 1851, which had
    given prominence to British industrial design, then widely thought
    to be lacking in aesthetic qualities. The architect and critic Owen
    Jones, who sketched details and plans at Granada's Alhambra in the
    1830s, made explicit the link between improving industrial design
    and the superb craftsmanship displayed in Islamic ornamental art in
    his influential book The Grammar of Ornament.

    Outstanding individual pieces, such as ornate trays and basins, were
    acquired by the new Museum of Ornamental Art (the V&A's precursor)
    for their superb detailing - yet there was also something akin
    to industrial espionage taking place, according to Stanley.
    "Manufacturers needed information on the material culture of
    non-western countries, so that they could match their production to
    the needs of overseas markets."

    The acquisition of Arab and Persian art, as it was then classified,
    continued apace, from a series of international exhibitions held
    in London and Paris. Iran even participated officially in the
    Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867. (At this time, the Turks
    were not considered capable of producing anything worthwhile - one
    theory ingeniously believed Iznik pottery to be a product of Persian
    craftsmen who had been marooned on the island of Rhodes.)

    The gallery of Islamic art as such was opened in 1950, when, says
    Stanley, "the knowledge we have today and the desire to explain to
    the public was simply not there". The Jameel Gallery takes as its
    twin mantras the new imperatives of museum culture - "education
    and engagement", with interactive displays linking the gallery's
    400 objects to the fine poetry tradition of the region, and proper
    discussion of social context. Above all, however, Stanley says the
    gallery should be a great experience for British Muslims, "to visit
    and come away with a real appreciation of the beauty of these works,
    and a sense of pride".

    The Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art opens at the Victoria and Albert
    Museum, London, SW7, this Thursday.

    --Boundary_(ID_FVeavjbxfM6oiBZ+fvOWdg)- -
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