When I was about four, my grandmother took me to church to begin attending Sunday School, and the Bible stories I began learning so often included Egypt, meaning that from that young age I had a concept of a hot, dry, deserty country with a very different way of life from the one I was living in 1950s Tasmania. Located at the south eastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea , Egypt produced one of the most important and influential civilisations of the ancient world. It was therefore quite thrilling to travel to that country in 2007 and marvel at everything in hot, dusty, crowded, noisy cities and visit a few of the ancient pyramids, temples and other monuments I’d known of and read about all my life.

A very special feature of our time in Cairo was being taken on studio visits to various artisans by well known fellow Australian textile artist, Jenny Bowker, who was living there at the time. Over several days she made sure we visited and saw the work of several expert spinners and weavers, a glassblower, a book binder, stone masons and several of the now well known tentmakers. On these studio visits we always found something wonderful to buy to take home, and perhaps the most dramatic of these was the work of the Egyptian tentmakers.

These men applique intricate Islamic motif designs from cut fabric pieces onto canvas fabric backing to produce panels which traditionally lined the tents of the nomadic desert dwelling Bedouins and provide windbreaks around campsites. The same timeless designs are still produced, by hand, from fabric cut with giant tailors’ scissors, and unlike most decorative arts among peoples who’ve mixed with and traded other cultures, few non-Islamic motifs and influences have crept into their art. But in other ways in modern times the market has changed: mass produced printed fabrics of these designs can be bought by the metre for use in street displays and home decoration; plus today many smaller pieces than tent liners are produced for the tourists who want to take home things like pillow covers, small wall panels or table runners. While we did buy a few table runners and cushion covers for gifts for family, we also bought ourselves two large, 2m x 2m sized wall hangings or bedcovers, and then had to buy two extra suitcases to get our treasures home! One of those pieces we hung in our bedroom to enjoy its brilliant colours every day. We learned that such elaborate pieces as these would take a man at least month to complete.

I’ve already said we had to buy a couple of large suitcases to bring our fibreart souvenirs back to Montevideo. (and for some reason I had felt the need to buy and bring back about 1/2 a supermarket shopping bag of very heavy hand blown chunky glass beads 🙂 In the next post in this series I’ll write about some of the others.