Antique Painted Wood Furnishings!

Have you heard of the Aleppo Room and the Damascus Room?

I hadn’t.

And since the discovery of the art in these magnificent extravagant amazing rooms now resident in museums, I have been wondering about many many things. Politics, history and the process of devolution among others. But closer to myself, I have been wondering how blur my existence has been to have never heard of these amazing places and cultures … what have I been doing that I missed this?

Anyhow – am thoroughly enjoying the expositions provided online by museums.

And the reason for this delving into new areas is this:

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So my mystery painted wood panel arrived and I cannot get enough of it …. photos from every angle, photos of every little ajami-styled raised gesso based highlights … study of the symmetry of colors used after B&W renditions, so much to absorb and understand.

And I urgently scramble through visuals of the object using the little clues I see to come up with search words that might yield something and then onto museum listings and from there onto more research papers on the subject, I am led again down the rabbit hole into Alice’s wonderland!

Here is the most exciting part of wandering into this space:

The Damascus Room

The Aleppo Room

I don’t know which is more heart-wrenching – the beauty of these rooms or the current fate of these places.

My little piece that is just a similar little piece of that superlative work is on wovensouls.com (Asset 1357)