Requests from referer
Object History
Faisal al Rayes, a Bahraini designer focused on Bahraini traditional dress, connected through Instagram with Dr. Reem Tariq El Mutwalli. They soon became friends as he helps to source many articles of dress, encouraging his clients to donate to the Zay Initiative.
Object Features
The base fabric of the veil (shaylah) is black silk tulle (tur). The silver adornment is applied by hand directly to the fabric. Usually, the silver straw (khus), about 0.5 cm wide, is weighed in (tulah) when purchased. It is threaded onto a flat, wide needle with a similarly flat, wide eye. The strips are then threaded into the mesh, crisscrossed, and flattened by applying pressure with fingernails.
The method is used to make different geometric shapes, composed of individual dots that look like stars. Once the whole design is complete, the fabric is stamped down and passed through a roller, to flatten the metal even more.
In this particular example, the design is fashioned of one repetitive flower motif flanked by two leaves on a stem, and scattered in uniform intervals across the whole fabric. The remaining area is filled with small dots. One of the two longer hemlines is accentuated with a heavily decorated 10 cm wide boarder composed of an 8 cm diagonal checkered band, followed by a repetitive 2 cm line of paisley motif, each pair mirroring one another and separated by a line of tiny dots.
This veil (shaylah) was designed to be worn at celebrations and special occasions. It is heavily adorned the hemline surrounding the face and draped on either side in front. The silver has tarnished slightly with age.
This is a physical example of the traditional Arabic saying (zinah_wa_khazinah), meaning “beauty and wealth in one”. The silver embellishment (mnaghad) which decorated this veil was employed to show status and style but could also be melted down and sold in times of need.
Keywords: naghdah wurud
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