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Notes on Culture & Antique Art, Ethnic Decor & Vintage Fashion | Wovensouls Art Gallery

Art for Food!

Covering food with a piece of cloth in the pre-plastic / glass era, seems to be a natural solution to the problem of keeping food fresh / safe / clean.

And it would seem natural that any culture that decorated their textiles would have also decorated their food covers.

But I have seen this use only in Swat Valley textiles, Sumatran textiles and Himachal Textiles. Makes me wonder why many of the cultures that are prolific art producers avoided this particular functional cloth when decorating.

Here is a Swat Valley bread cover – that – as the name suggests – is used to cover bread:

OLD SILK EMBROIDERY TEXTILE - FROM SWAT HAZARA NWFP

ATI-780 from the wovensouls collection

OLD SILK EMBROIDERY TEXTILE - FROM SWAT HAZARA NWFP

BREAD COVER

 

OLD SILK EMBROIDERY TEXTILE - FROM SWAT HAZARA NWFP

Extremely fine work!

“Women still embroider bread cloths and cushions today…

In these embroidered cloths the women express artistic creativity and craft skills. One often has the feeling that they embroider their world onto the bread cloth a little. ”

– from the fantastic book by Johannes Kalter

See more images of this and other Swat pieces here.

 

jm

Nov 2015

 

 

 

 

One comment on “Art for Food!

  1. Dara B
    November 8, 2016

    Your art blog inspires me alot and the colors are just fabulous!!!!

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