Design news
Bridging Cultures by Design Traditional Islamic arts are alive and well – in London, under the patronage of none other than HRH Charles, Prince of Wales. Ana Finel Honigman takes a look at a truly unique firm whose products and designs are the fruit of the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts – and are also inspired by a host of unexpected influences. A dish is an unexpected vehicle for communion between two contentious cultures and their diverse aesthetic traditions. But the postgraduate Prince’s School of Traditional Arts in London’s trendy Shoreditch district, founded in 2004 by Prince Charles, provides just such a cross-cultural exchange. The beautiful handcrafted housewares and other objects produced by the school are genuinely rare hybrid blossoms of European and Islamic decorative arts. The dignified porcelain and crystal storefront display of Traditional Arts Limited initially seems like a portal into an incongruously dainty world. But the luxurious, delicate objects are evidence of Prince Charles’s concern with establishing a creative dialogue with Islam by reviving and maintaining traditional Islamic design. As one of the few institutions in the West to provide courses in such disciplines as stained-glass window-making, gilding, lettering and Islamic calligraphy (to students from a range of ethnic backgrounds and ages), the school makes these endangered arts contemporary.
Bridging Cultures by Design
72 Alef magazine Summer 2008
The Prince of Wales’s relationship with the firm is admirably active. He has proven himself personally invested in the products he endorses, and even launched the Traditional Arts collection at Clarence House, his London home, with service on dishes designed by one of the school’s former students. A reincarnation of the Visual Islamic and Traditional Arts programme originally housed in the Royal College of Art, the School of Traditional Arts trains students in arabesque, mosaic, miniature Mughal painting, stone carving, woodwork, calligraphy, tile making and theory. But the most striking aspect of the curriculum might be its practical application through Traditional Arts Limited, the trading programme launched last year. Acting as a commercial platform for work emerging from the school, it teaches students to respond to clients’ wants. Primarily producing tableware, the trading company directs its revenues back into funding for the school itself, in what the directors hope will be a ‘virtuous cycle’. The works are commissioned and sold at high-end London department stores such as Thomas
Bridging Cultures by Design
Goode, Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason. They are also made to order for clients in the Middle East. Although the school trains students in Islamic aesthetic traditions, the products sold through Traditional Arts Limited are cultural fusions. The mixture of cultures evident in Traditional Arts’ objects initially appears conservative. That is their fundamental allure. The English china, English and Italian sterling and silverware and crystal stemware from England and the Czech Republic all serve as bases for designs ranging in origin and inspiration from eleventh-century illuminated Islamic manuscripts to
contemporary applications of Islamic principles. One of the most popular designs, adorning silver openwork candlesticks, crystal stemware and the rims of full table sets, is ‘Kirtim Flower’, a lotus-like pattern created by British then-MA student Samantha Buckley, based on illustrated botanical books nearly 1,000 years old. This autumn, Traditional Arts Limited will expand with cufflinks, neckties and traditional carpets, all decorated with the company’s signature patterns. The ties produced by the firm will join its housewares as representative of a harmony of cultures – at least in the area of elegant design. www.traditionalarts.co.uk