Latest news with #TurquoiseMountain
Arab News
2 days ago
- Business
- Arab News
Saudi handicrafts on show at London's Selfridges
RIYADH: The Saudi Cultural Development Fund (CDF) is showcasing traditional handicrafts from the Kingdom at luxury department store Selfridges in London from June 3-22. The initiative is taking place during Saudi Arabia's Year of Handicrafts and is in collaboration with British charity organization Turquoise Mountain, which works to support the production of traditional crafts around the world. The collection celebrates diverse Saudi artisans and features intricate palm crafts, delicate jewelry and accessories, and fine leatherwork, with an emphasis on showcasing the differences between various regional styles in Saudi Arabia. The showcase is being held alongside an exhibition of fashion designs, held by the Saudi 100 Brands initiative. A key milestone in the CDF's efforts to support the Kingdom's cultural sector is the recent launch of the Nama' Accelerators: Handicrafts Track — a dedicated solution that supports cultural businesses through specialized training, mentorship, and financial incentives.
The National
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Sotheby's to host talks and workshops at Jeddah's Islamic Arts Biennale
Sotheby's will be presenting a series of educational talks and workshops, starting on Sunday, at the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah. The series, titled The World of Islamic Art, will run between April 6 and May 15. It is designed as an accessible introduction to the world of Islamic art, exploring topics that range from its global legacy to specific examination of the region's textiles and crafts. The talks will be led by Sotheby's specialists and feature cultural luminaries. These include Mariet Westermann, director and chief executive of the Guggenheim; Mariam Rosser-Owen, curator of the Victoria & Albert Museum's Middle Eastern section; Thalia Kennedy, global creative director of Turquoise Mountain; and Jordanian-Palestinian architect and artist Abeer Seikaly. Guided tours of the biennale, led by the speakers, will take place after each talk. Sotheby's is also hosting a workshop in collaboration with Turquoise Mountain, an initiative launched in 2006 by King Charles III to restore historic sites and bolster traditional crafts in several areas, including the Levant and Saudi Arabia. The workshops will be dedicated to preserving traditional Islamic crafts. They will be led by master artisans, including Moataz Hammoush, an expert in mother of pearl inlay and Abdelrahman Shaaban Tabannaj, a master of wood mosaic. Sotheby's specialists will also take part in the workshop, delving into the historical significance of the crafts and exploring how they developed over centuries. The Islamic Arts Biennale is running until May 25 at the Western Hajj Terminal of King Abdulaziz International Airport. It is being organised by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation. The event is taking place under the title And All That Is In Between. The theme is inspired by a recurring verse in the Quran, which describes the all-encompassing beauty of God's creations. The verse translates to: 'And God created the heavens and the Earth and all that is in between.' The biennale is bringing together historical artefacts from the Islamic world, as well as contemporary works. More than 30 major international institutions are presenting works at the event. These include the Louvre Museum in Paris, London's Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. The Ahmed Baba Institute from Timbuktu, the Suleymaniye Library from Istanbul, as well as Saudi cultural centres, such as Ithra and the King Fahad National Library are also participating.
The Independent
03-04-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
How a king's carpet gave a voice to Afghan women silenced by the Taliban
Hillsborough Castle, outside Belfast, is both a seat of government, used by the secretary of state for Northern Ireland and a cherished royal residence. Since 2021, the village has been known as Royal Hillsborough and the history of the peace process is captured in royal moments here. It was in the cosy Lady Grey's study, where the hard yards were put in for peace in Northern Ireland. There are portraits of the late Sinn Fein leader Martin McGuinness and of Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, who died in 2022, and of prime minister Tony Blair and US president Bill Clinton. There is a chess board of orange and green squares, featuring protagonists of the period as players, which was given to Mo Mowlam, the former secretary of state for Northern Ireland. She gave so much to the peace process – famously once tossing off her wig in the middle of negotiations – that some of her ashes are scattered in the Hillsborough garden. It was in the dining room that Blair looked out at the rose bushes alongside Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and agreed on the 1999 Hillsborough Declaration in which both governments called for weapons to be put beyond use. It was in the Red Room that Queen Elizabeth met the Irish president Mary McAleese in 2005 for a 'cordial, friendly chat'. To preserve the rich story contained within its walls, Historic Royal Palaces, who maintain the palaces, started refurbishing Hillsborough Castle in 2014. The Throne Room was re-cast with rich dark green damask fabrics and dark red chairs of state. Behind the chairs, hangs a heraldic banner, created by needlework students at the College of Art in Belfast for the coronation of George V and reused for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The paintings from the royal collection hung up in the room include Rubens, so there are more deep reds, emeralds and sapphires. And it will be in the Throne Room where the King will soon present a new vision of weaving destinies of another country's history. After the initial refurbishment, the Egyptian carpet on display looked a bit faded by the standards of the rest and in 2019, Aileen Peirce, head of interpretation and design at HRP, and Turquoise Mountain, a charity which protects the heritage of places in conflict, began a project close to the King's heart. His idea was for a gigantic Persian carpet, made in Afghanistan, overseen by Turquoise Mountain, of which he is a patron. It is hard to exaggerate the epic nature of the work, which was funded by the Drapers', a livery company dating back to the 14th and 15th centuries. Altogether, the 15m x 6m carpet will require around 100 artists and craftspeople; designers, geometers, miniaturists, graphers, dyers, weavers, cutters and curators. It will provide the women weavers in Northern Afghanistan with employment for a year and the grand unrolling will take place in the summer of 2026. The Hillsborough commission is to be a contemporary version of the famous Ardabil Carpet from Iran, which is on show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington. Only Iran and Afghanistan have the heritage skills for a carpet of this size. The design concept comes from a particular manuscript page that was made in the ateliers, or workshops, around 500 years ago in Herat, western Afghanistan. The medallion design has at its centre the royal coat of arms and a border which reflects motifs both from Afghanistan and Hillsborough. There will be emblems from the gardens: tulips, roses, pears, acorns, and Irish bees as well as pineapples from the historic pineapple house. Afghan designers have then added pomegranates and they stylised the flowers to suit the traditional shapes of Afghanistan. Silkworms are also hidden throughout the carpet for children to seek. Dr Thalia Kennedy, the creative director of Turquoise Mountain, worked with the medievalist Aileen Pierce at Historic Royal Palaces on the faithful understanding of heritage design. Peirce, who has a doctorate in Islamic art, says: ' You have to do justice to those original crafts. These are not your Hoxton bachelor pad. I am a medievalist. My world is a riot of colour.' The richness of the blues and reds are taken from a tabard in the Throne Room of the Ulster King of Arms and also from the paintings by Rubens. Peirce says: 'You want to get it right. So many micro-decisions are taken in a room like this: tassels on curtains, what gilding... We looked at bees and thought not quite right, the silkworms at first too big, mustard colour not quite right. When you are trying to realise a world you have to get it right.' Kennedy also says that their Afghan advisers are masters of tonal harmony: 'We looked at a lot of 15th- and 16th-century Afghan Persian and Moghul rugs, our Afghan colourist advisers who have got a great eye was the last word on that. ' Skills were tested by the sheer challenge of scale. The graphing software was not initially able to cope with the size of a carpet so big that it would need its own loom and room in Afghanistan. Once they had found a computer that wouldn't crash, they were able to print on to actual graph paper in order for the weavers to follow the exact design. The carpet is now finally ready to go to the weavers. Kennedy says they work with weaving groups mainly in the north and in Bamyan in the central highlands who specialise in a level of knot count necessary for the realisation of the curvilinear lines. The wool comes from Ghazni sheep, which has a lustre almost a lanolin quality to it which is distinctive: 'It is why carpets from Afghanistan are particularly prized,' says Kennedy. ' It has this intrinsic light quality to it, almost translucent – you look at it from various angles and it is totally different.' The dyers mostly come from Aqcha in northern Afghanistan and after the dyers come the weavers. Between 10 and 30 seated in rows, weaving on yarns. Kennedy says: 'I am in awe of the women who can sit with a bit of graph paper and make this a reality. They are not tracing it, they can read it straight into this huge carpet. Ten people sitting in a row are somehow subliminally in tune with each other. They do 3cms a day, all attuned to that same pattern and same outcome.' For Aileen Peirce, the next great concern is the arrival of the giant carpet next summer. She is looking for a commercial freezer large enough to house it to make sure no pests alight with it. For curators, moths are the things that strike the greatest fear into their hearts. But not everyone is a fan of this project, and others like it. There has been some cultural thuggery in recent months, with one commentator describing Turquoise Mountain as 'woke colonialism' and its hand-knotted rugs as 'a must-have for every virtuous home in the West's turbo-smug boroughs'. Shoshana Stewart, the president of Turquoise Mountain, says that the act of weaving the carpet has a wider resonance in a country where even looking out of a window and access to education has been banned. 'Women can earn income while husbands and sons are out of work, an income means security, health support, a connection with the outside world.' She adds that the work the charity does with artists in conflict zones is important because: 'When everything is going wrong – the economy, security, the future disappearing – there is something really special about heritage crafts, learned from mothers, passed on to daughters, something beautiful to show off to the outside world.' But Afghan activist Shabnam Nasimi, the CEO of Friends of Afghan Women Network (Fawn), which she co-founded with me, agrees. 'Afghanistan's heritage isn't just about the past, it's about survival today. Every knot in this carpet, every colour mixed by hand, is a quiet rebellion against those who would rather see our culture erased. Craftsmanship isn't just decoration; it's identity, history and the proof that these women are still here. This isn't just a carpet; it's a statement. A reminder that our culture endures – not in museums, not as relics, but as something living, breathing and impossible to silence.' Sir Nicholas Coleridge, chair of Historic Royal Palaces, says: 'It's a remarkable carpet – people will be visiting it in 500 years time. Lucky Hillsborough is to be the recipient of this extraordinary piece.' And in Afghanistan, the women carpet weavers are making a statement to reconcile the past to a hoped for a better and brighter future.
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Charity run by Rory Stewart's wife has $1m funding cut after Musk reforms
A charity run by Rory Stewart's wife has lost $1 million of USAid funding as a result of Elon Musk's foreign aid-slashing Doge reforms, the former minister revealed. Mr Stewart said that the support for Turquoise Mountain, a charity that works in Afghanistan, Myanmar and the Middle East, had stopped abruptly, despite it having a contract. The organisation is led by Shoshana Stewart, who has worked for the charity since 2006 when it was set up by the King, then the Prince of Wales. According to its website, the organisation seeks to 'revive historic areas and traditional crafts to provide jobs, skills and a renewed sense of pride' in the areas it works. In a scene from the 2015 BBC documentary Bitter Lake, a woman reported to be from the charity is shown teaching Afghan women about Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, a urinal that was exhibited in an art gallery in 1917 and is generally considered to be the first piece of conceptual art. Mr Stewart told The Rest Is Politics podcast, which he co-hosts with Alistair Campbell, on Wednesday: 'It doesn't matter you have a contract. 'Turquoise Mountain, which my wife Shoshana runs, had a contract (and) had another million dollars to go and the money just stops'. Mr Musk, the tech billionaire and head of the new department of government efficiency (Doge), announced on Monday that USAid would be shut down. USAid is the world's largest single aid donor, distributing some $72 billion of assistance in 2023 to a range of causes, from natural disaster relief to access to clean water and HIV/Aids treatments. Mr Stewart met his wife when he moved to Kabul in 2005 to help set up Turquoise Mountain. He was chief executive of the charity himself for two years before his wife took on the role. The charity says it has restored more than 150 buildings and trained more than 15,000 artisans, generating over $17 million. It comes just weeks after the former Tory MP became embroiled in a social media spat with JD Vance, the US vice-president. Mr Stewart hit out at Mr Vance after the US vice-president discussed religion in a recent Fox News interview when he said that the 'Christian concept' of an order of love had been 'inverted' by the far-Left. Mr Vance retaliated by telling Mr Stewart: 'The problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
13-02-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Charity run by Rory Stewart's wife has $1m funding cut after Musk reforms
A charity run by Rory Stewart's wife has lost $1 million of USAid funding as a result of Elon Musk's foreign aid-slashing Doge reforms, the former minister revealed. Mr Stewart said that the support for Turquoise Mountain, a charity that works in Afghanistan, Myanmar and the Middle East, had stopped abruptly, despite it having a contract. The organisation is led by Shoshana Stewart, who has worked for the charity since 2006 when it was set up by the King, then the Prince of Wales. According to its website, the organisation seeks to 'revive historic areas and traditional crafts to provide jobs, skills and a renewed sense of pride' in the areas it works. In a scene from the 2015 BBC documentary Bitter Lake, a woman reported to be from the charity is shown teaching Afghan women about Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, a urinal that was exhibited in an art gallery in 1917 and is generally considered to be the first piece of conceptual art. Mr Stewart told The Rest Is Politics podcast, which he co-hosts with Alistair Campbell, on Wednesday: 'It doesn't matter you have a contract. 'Turquoise Mountain, which my wife Shoshana runs, had a contract (and) had another million dollars to go and the money just stops'. Mr Musk, the tech billionaire and head of the new department of government efficiency (Doge), announced on Monday that USAid would be shut down. USAid is the world's largest single aid donor, distributing some $72 billion of assistance in 2023 to a range of causes, from natural disaster relief to access to clean water and HIV/Aids treatments. Mr Stewart met his wife when he moved to Kabul in 2005 to help set up Turquoise Mountain. He was chief executive of the charity himself for two years before his wife took on the role. The charity says it has restored more than 150 buildings and trained more than 15,000 artisans, generating over $17 million. It comes just weeks after the former Tory MP became embroiled in a social media spat with JD Vance, the US vice-president. Mr Stewart hit out at Mr Vance after the US vice-president discussed religion in a recent Fox News interview when he said that the 'Christian concept' of an order of love had been 'inverted' by the far-Left. Mr Vance retaliated by telling Mr Stewart: 'The problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years.'
