Tapestry from Harrania Workshop El Awadly

Orient Lights Egyptian, Islamic and Bedouin Art

Exhibition Tour

Overview

The Workshop El Awadly

The origin of tapestry of Harrania

In 1952 Ramses Wissa Wassef, sculptor and professor of architecture at the university of Cairo started an experiment. He was led by the assumption that every child naturally has a potential of creativity and sense of visualisation. This is gradually spoilt by educational systems until they are adults, who are only meant to amass intellectual knowledge. Compulsions of the consumer society and mass media do the rest. Therefore he decided to stimulate children to start weaving at an early age. He founded a hostel and workshop settlement in Harrania where children aged 5 were admitted who started weaving there without any copy. It was his goal to unite art, education, social life, handicraft as well as the children`s daily upkeeping in one.

The basis of his work persued 3 important principles:

no models, drawings or drafts

no preformed aesthetic influences from the outside

no interference by adults

In 1979 nine years after his death the works of the 1^st generation were exhibited for the 1^st time in Germany in the Hildesheimer Roemer-Praelizaeus museum. This project was continued by his wife and daughters, whereby the main emphasis was put on pottery and weaving.

The El Awadly weaving workshop

Fundamental methods of teaching
In 1976 the engineer Fouad El Awadly and his German wife founded a weaving workshop in Harrania intending to preserve and develop the intellectual heritage of Wissa Wassef. At first work began on five looms. Today 80 adults and children are weaving in the workshop deciding themselves when to work.

The children begin weaving at the age of 9 or 10. They attend school and live with their families being able to fulfil their duties such as: baking bread, looking after younger sisters and brothers or tending cattle. In their spare time, they come to the workshop especially during the summer holidays, which last 4 months in Egypt. Without drafts or the influence of a grown-up, the children start weaving. From the very beginning they choose the colours themselves with they want to weave and thus the first small pieces of art come into being. But soon they become more self-assured and try to weave a small bird or a leave with plants and flowers. They love colours and will weave a lamb with blue wool because they like it better. They can develop their phantasies freely and assimilate their impressions.

Life of the children is still very much close to nature. In each home are goats and chicken, sometimes a water-buffalo or a donkey are kept. The village is situated nearly a channel where geese and ducks romp about. These rural surroundings, life in the village with its customs an festivities as well as mutual trips to the zoo and the fields are all the subjects worked into the tapestry.

The young artists have never seen a work of art; they scoop their ideas from continueing contact with nature, as well as from themselves and their surroundings.By renouncing drafts all the mental power can be used for weaving. This procedure does not only ask for more patience and concentration but also the execution is different to a drawing or painting. The weaving develops strictly `bottem to top`(sometimes a turn through 90° ) The drawing or painting grows together from all sides.

The drawing contains the danger of carelessness for the child, whilst weaving asks for a longer stay with the intended work of art and a greater effort of creativity in the arrangement.

After 10 to 12 years of work, the craftmanship has often gone beyond handy crafts and has become art itself with its direct effect. Over the years the naive portrayals became masterly rhythmical compositions with delicate fine work and rich motives, showing unbelievable variations in colour and perfect details. Every artist develops his own personal pictorial language.

The Technique of Weaving and Dyeing

This particular technique of weaving uses upright Hautelisse-looms, working on an upright warp-thread of flax or cotton. Finger and small irons are the only tools. In contrast to normal weaving where the end-thread is pulled through the whole width of the piece of work. In this particular pictorial form of weaving the thread has to be cut according to the motives, as required. They work in mosaics. After each weft the comb is pulled tight. The harder the pull the tighter and more valuable the tapestry. A grown-up weaver needs at least 6 to 8 weeks for a square-meter. Youngsters and children need at least 3-4 months.

Local wool is used which is dyed only with vegetable colours. Madder and reseda grow in the workshop`s garden; rare indigo is imported from Germany. Miss Al Awadly has specialized in the dyeing techniques with vegetable colours and their setting.

All vegetable colours are composition. No plant has only one colour. It`s always a mixture of several colours. Even if a particular dye dominates each plant, such as: the madder root is red, but it still also contains a smaller amount of other tones. Blue is dyed with indigo, yellow with reseda, red with madder and cochenille, beige and brown tones with henna and campher leaves, mixed colours originate by laying colours over each other. The wool is treated witch eulan during the dyeing process to made it resistant against moths.

Social principles

Whoever is integrated in the workshop, must not be afraid of being dismissed one day, no matter how long it takes to develop his abilities or how great his talents are. From the very beginning each child is paid for his work. Even if these first trials are far from being perfect and not saleable, it is still the best the child is able to give. By paying for this work, it shows that his work is not worthless.

The children receive advance payment twice a month to ensure a regular income, because the work on a tapestry often takes months.

From the age of 18 all weaves are covered by social and medical insurance.

If they have worries or problems, they get as much help as possible be it a subsidy for building a house, a dowry for one`s daughters wedding or for an operation.

A special emphasis is laid on helping girls and women.

The project tries to disturb the social life of the village as little as possible. By allowing the weavers to decide on their own working hours everyone can attend to his duties at home. Mothers bring their babies and smaller brothers and sisters play happily in the garden. It was successful to create a happy atmosphere which can be seen on the faces of the children and adults and in the results of their work.