Day 163 - Chefchaouen textile


July 1, 2019

Gallery 457 is devoted to the arts of Muslim Spain, Sicily, and North Africa. I'm reminded of the important role that Muslim craftsmen played in Norman Sicily. I learn, too, that Cordoba rivaled Baghdad and Cairo as a center of culture. It was a center of book production, not just of the Qu'ran but also of books in Hebrew. I'm particularly intrigued by a book dating to sometime in the 13th through 15th century called the Sefer Musre Hafilosofim (Book of the Morals of Philosophers), an anthology of the writings oif Greek philosophers that Muslim scholars assiduously compiled and translated into Arabic and that was then translated into Hebrew.  

If Gallery 456 whetted my appetite for sightseeing in Morocco, today's object has  whetted my appetite for shopping! It's an embroidered textile panel, perhaps 10 feet tall and 3 feet wide, made around 1800 in Chefchaouen, a city we will be visiting.   Elaborately embroidered in rich shades of blue, red, green, and gold silk against a neutral linen ground, the geometrical designs are presumably traditional and include squares, Xs, zigzags, and highly stylized flowers within diamond-shaped lozenges and squared-off eight-pointed "stars."  I'd love to find something similar made by contemporary craftsmen, although I can't imagine I could afford it. The piece would go perfectly with my living room decor - though I'm not sure where I would put it! 

I note that while the patterns in the top and bottom stars and in the two diamond shapes appear identical,  the star at the center of the panel has a complementary but different design. Another example of the union of disparate but harmonious elements that I think of as characteristic of Islamic art- or is that true of art in general?

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