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Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art
The highlight of the gallery’s display is the Ardabil Carpet, the world’s oldest and most beautiful carpet.
Prince Charles officially opened the new Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London last fortnight.
The Saudi Riyal 37 million, gallery received donations from the Jameel family. Mohammed Jameel, son of late, Abdul Latif Jameel, founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel Group, has dedicated the museum to his father and mother, Nafisa.
Mohammed Jameel, the president and CEO of the Abdul Latif Jameel Group said that over 2,85,000 people worldwide have viewed the international exhibition which has been travelling around the world during the three-year period of the gallery’s construction.
“The gallery will provide a showcase for the V&A’s acclaimed collection of Islamic art in all its beautiful and varied forms, religious and secular,” said Mark Jones, director of the V&A. “We hope it will help people to appreciate one of the world’s great cultures and spread a deeper understanding of Islamic art,” he added.
The gallery houses over 400 objects selected from the museum’s collection of over 10,000 Islamic artefacts. The highlight of the gallery’s display is the Ardabil Carpet, the world’s oldest dated carpet and one of the largest, most beautiful and historically important in the world.
Made in Iran in 1539, the carpet is the centrepiece of the new gallery. It has been re-designed so that it can be displayed, specially illuminated, horizontally at floor level, as it would originally have been. Measuring 10.5m x 5m and described by William Morris as a design of “singular perfection,” it is a masterpiece of Islamic art. It has not been exhibited in this fashion since 1892.
Other displays will show the great skill and ingenuity of Islamic craftsmen, and illustrate the region’s religious life. An outstanding example is a richly decorated pulpit commissioned for a mosque in Cairo by Sultan Qaitbay, who ruled Egypt in the late 15th century.
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