Arabesque

Every day an old man sets up his tools in a bare and muddy cobblestoned street in the old city of Damascus. He has done this all his life. He mends stools. He is for me, the epitome of Syria. It is a country where people work with their hands, where socks are still darned, and shoes and brooms repaired.

The tiles (based on an old Ottoman design) are hand appliqued. I tweaked the edge pieces out of line and altered colours from tile to tile so that they would have the slightly random look of hand painted tiles, done by different artists. I sewed them onto grouting.

The border is a reminder of Damascus' main attraction and the reason it stayed on the major route of camel trains across desert areas. All water in the city was free to travellers. Small drinking fountains - a silver tap with a metal cup attached - are framed in mosaic and stonework in walls all around the city, and are still in use. I took the border from the mosaic around a fountain.

The archway in the quilt is almost life size as I wanted the viewer to feel that they could step through the doorway, feel the chill, and smell the mud and coffee and spices.

Photograph by Andrew Sikorski.