A visit to the second largest country in Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, provided the opportunity to visit The Omani Heritage Gallery in Muscat, situated in the Jawharat Al-Shatti Complex, adjacent to the Intercontinental Hotel. The Heritage Gallery gives invaluable exposure to the varied handmade items produced by the Omani Bedu craft workers that otherwise would have gone unnoticed by the many tourists that flock annually to the beautiful Sultanate. The effort of the gallery helps to encourage and nurture the continuation of their centuries-old indigenous craftwork traditions.
Many fine examples of craftwork on display in the gallery include terracotta pottery from the coastal plain of Dhofar, copper work from the interior, and textiles from both Wahaybah Sand and the mountainous region of Al-Jabal Al-Akhdar. Many of the ceramic, silver and copper items are akin to museum pieces and reflect the pride the Omani artisans have in recreating artifacts from their glorious tribal past. All of these items are for sale and profits generated from the sales are used to support the artisans and their families and the Omani craft work industry as a whole.
The larger proportion of the gallery’s stock consists of a varied display of flat woven (kelim) rugs called shamla. The majority of shamlas are woven on horizontal ground looms using a mixture of handspun and hand-dyed sheep’s wool, goat and camel hair. The shamlas are woven in four different styles and the weavers make use of only four different natural colors. The patterns are always plain red and black stripes; plain black and white stripes; shamla regma (design), woven in black, red and white, or shamla regma in black and white only. The latter two designs display a central band of Bedouin symbolism.
Women weave the majority of shamlas from the Wahaybah sand in the northeast, and men weave the minority of shamlas from the Al-Jabal Al-Akhdar in the upper north of Oman. Both groups trade through the small towns of Sinaw and Nizwa respectively.
The shamlas from Wahaybah sand have a supple and friendly handle when compared with the shamlas from Al-Jabal Al-Akhdar that can often appear and feel quite rigid and tense. The reason for this is that the men tend to bear down a lot harder than the women on the wefts when weaving, which reduces the suppleness of their shamlas. This anomaly, however, does not in any way render them inferior.
The main colors used by the weavers are red, black, white and beige. The red is obtained by using the madder root. The black is from either black sheep’s wool, camel hair or goat hair. The white is made from sheep’s wool and the beige is from a combination of camel and goat hair. Of all the four colors, the rich and warm natural red is the most laborious color to achieve. On average it takes three attempts to reach the required shade of red. Each attempt requires a vat of boiling water with a specific amount of pounded or finely ground madder root added. The sheep’s wool is added after boiling the madder root and the wool is left to soak for approximately ten days. The same procedure is followed two more times. A total of 30 days has to elapse before the correct shade of red has been achieved. However, the use of easily obtained and prepared synthetic dyes reduces this labor-intensive practice to only hours versus days.
The majority of shamlas are woven in beach towel proportions and smaller. Their striped design, along with additions of Bedu symbolism, effortlessly conveys to the eye a genuine artisan tribal past that is rustic, innocently simple and refreshingly different from the majority of mass-produced tribal textiles around the world. Another endearing feature of the shamla is the thickly tasseled warps at each end of the rug.
Other woven artifacts to look out for in the shops and souks of Oman, and there are many, include donkey trappings, camel trappings and camel rugs. However, be prepared to barter as the prices asked for initially will usually be on the steep side.
There is no doubt that the Omani shamla is a “must buy” for any textile collector and that it would grace the floor of any home. With its excellent standard of weaving and natural coloring, the shamla stands equal to the tribal weavings of Iran, Afghanistan, and Russia.
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Visit: www.warpsandwefts.com
- Arab News Features 10 July 2003