Author
Unknown (maker)
Publication Place
Egypt (made) Cairo (made, probably) -
Type
Other
Language
Undetermined
Digital
Yes
Manuscript
No
Physical Dimensions
Length: 243cm
(Maximum), Width: 135cm
(Maximum)
Library
Victoria and Albert Museum
Library Asset ID
ME.3-2023
Record ID
ME.3-2023
Library Location
Middle East Section
Notes
The craft of khayamiya (appliqué) has a long tradition in Egypt. Historically, it was used to make large tents such as used for festivals, awnings and canopies. Panels such as these represent an adaptation of the craft in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, during the emergence of mass tourism to Egypt and the commercial opportunities this provided to craftsmen . Responding both to tourist numbers and the popularity of pharaonic design, tentmakers also started making panels with ancient designs, to attract this foreign market that associated Egypt primarily with its ancient past. Usually, panels for tourists were small-scale, such as cushion sized, designed to be easily carried home. This piece is instead a rarer example of a large-scale pharaonic khayamiya, one of three pieces given by the same donor and which were originally designed as panels comprising an architectural space, therefore straddling the two traditions. They could potentially have been intended to make a tent-like space on a hotel terrace, as attested in archival images, or to be erected back at home. In order to appeal to the international market, these panels deliberately played off of touristsâ ideas of Egypt, presenting an Orientalising view of an ancient and picturesque land of pharaohs, pyramids and indecipherable hieroglyphs. However, importantly, this was a view of Egypt engaged with and encouraged by the tentmakers themselves, and re-interpreted in their own terms. In other words, touristic khayamiya were the physical outcome of interactions between Egyptians and tourists, representing not just tourist perceptions of Egypt, but how tentmakers imagined tourist perceptions of Egypt. Likewise, the emergence of pharaonic of 'touristic' khayamiya did not lead to a binary distinction between pieces made for the international market, and pieces for domestic consumption. Pharaonic khayamiya often incorporated elements of traditional design alongside folkloric motifs reating to contemporary Islamic life, and pieces for the domestic market also occasionally adopted pharaonic motifs. Rather, new markets expanded the artistic repertoire available to craftsmen, and cultural encounters created a new, hybrid form of material. The visual sources used by khayamiya makers were similar to those accessible to Western tourists and which helped shape their visions of Egypt: postcards, illustrated guide books and art books, as much as the visible remains themselves. Although some motifs and designs were copied from specific monuments or tomb paintings, usually the tentmakers freely mixed and matched sequences of images from different sources, rendering them freely and schematically. Hieroglyphs became simpler, often illegible; designs which the craftsmen did not understand were mis-represented or improvised; and motifs which in the ancient canon would not necessarily be seen together were combined side-by-side to make new overall compositions, very similar to how European designers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries treated Egyptian motifs. This free re-interpretation, as well as the frequent use of motifs like the winged vulture in ancient Egyptian art, can often make it hard to trace specific sources of inspiration for a khayamiya.
Malzemeler ve teknikler
Cotton appliqué on linen/wool backing. Cotton (Textile)
Fiziksel açıklama
Panel with Pharaonic designs, made of panels of cotton fabric appliquéd onto a heavy linen backing. At the top of the panel, below a frieze of alternating open and closed lotus flowers, is an imagined scene incorporating both folkloric imagery of cattle-herding and a date palm, alongside more explicitly Pharaonic imagery such as an inscribed obelisk, pyramids, and a man worshipping before a human-headed ba bird. Below this, either side of the dooeway opening are two pillars, rendering the whole scene around the opening (including the top fireze) into the shape of a pylon. The pillars are decorated with papyriform capitals, and each includes a standing figure of the god Ptah, below a winged sun-disk.
