At The British Museum we have an amazing collection of textiles.
We have over 1 000 palestinian textiles;
Some clothing, some household objects, some for everyday use, and some for special occasions.
And most of them in one way or another, are embellished with exquisite embroidery.
My name is Omar Joseph Nasser Khouri. I'm an anti-fashion designer. I specialize in textiles
from Palestine. I studied fashion design and technology at London College of Fashion
and later social anthropology with an emphasis on Palestinian textiles at Goldsmiths.
Omar came first to The British Museum in 2013 as part of the International Training Program. The
International Training Program is a summer program held by The British Museum where training is
provided in best museum practice for international participants. The time they spend here is shared
between The British Museum and partner museums across the UK. And the aim and goal of the project
is to create a global network of colleagues that transcends cultural and geographical boundaries.
The Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) was set up in 1865 by a group of Victorian
gentlemen who came from practically every professional walk of life you can imagine.
And the aim of the society was to physically map and record the 'holy land' as it's often
termed - the area of the southern Levant, in a scientific measured and methodical way. I became
aware of the Palestine Exploration Fund during my time at the International Training Program in
2013. We did a visit to the PEF and I met Felicity and saw the library and part of the collection.
Since then I wanted to actually do something with the Palestine Exploration Fund
because of their specialized information and interest in Palestine. As part of his
work here in 2013 we became aware of Omar's intense knowledge of Palestinian embroidery and
of textiles, and this led to the idea of a legacy project whereby Omar could come to The British
Museum and help us with our database, and help us update the records for the Palestinian textiles.
Of our 1000 textiles, many were not photographed and many of them have incomplete information
on the database, so Omar's knowledge is very handy and very useful to us. And for Omar I think the
exposure to this amazing collection of textiles has enabled him to discover new stitches and to
discover new techniques of embroidery which he was not very familiar with. And so the exchange
of knowledge is important both ways. One of the things the PEF does is every year we have
a grants program whereby we put aside a set of money which we then award to successful applicants
for research projects relating to the material culture of Palestine. So the aim of this project
was to come in and enhance the records for the Palestine textile collection so wherever there
is information missing in terms of physical description, techniques of making, materials,
provenance, date etc. I was to attempt to remedy that. What we have here at the PEF
as a result of the work that we carried out in the late 19th and the 20th century
is an amazing archive of research that these people carried out. So we have archaeological
collections we also have archives and photographs. And the archives and collections act as a really
important repository of information about the land of Palestine in the 19th century but also going
back into the ancient past from the archaeological material as well. It's a very complementary
project in the sense that a lot of the information that's sometimes necessary for this project
comes from the Palestine Exploration Fund. One of the ways in which the PEF has been able to get
directly involved in this project is by supplying Omar with visual reference material through
the photographic collections that we have. Because what he has in The British Museum are these
wonderful dresses, and cloaks, and garments that have been worn, but here we have the photographs
which show them being worn. And so he's able to have the context of their daily life. The project
was possible because of the International Training Program which basically took on this project as
a legacy project and helped fund it alongside the Palestine Exploration Fund and the British
Council in the Palestinian territories. And so far with the help of Helen Wolf and Imogen Lang
at the textile center, we've worked on more than 550 records and we've got about just as
much to go. For us Omar's work is central to our mission as it were to promote understanding into
Palestinian material culture.