Carpets for Prayer by Sumru Belger Krody - June 12

H-Islamart Online Lecture - Earthly Beauty, Heavenly Art: Carpets for Prayer by Sumru Belger Krody - June 12

Discussion published by Sumru Krody on Tuesday, May 25, 2021 Lecture: Earthly Beauty, Heavenly Art: Carpets for Prayer by Sumru Belger Krody, Senior Curator, The Textile Museum Collection at The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum Saturday, June 12, 2021, 1 pm EDT / 10 am PDT Admission is free, with registration Registration: https://tinyurl.com/PryrCarpetSKlsrv

Hosted by Textile Museum Associates of Southern California, Colorado Textile Group, Portland Area Rug Society, San Francisco Bay Area Rug Society, and Seattle Textile and Rug Society

Sumru will speak about Islamic prayer carpets and their iconography. Textiles in Islamic society fulfill far more than the functions normally expected of them. Among these textiles, prayer carpets hold a special place. They beautify spaces, while conveying metaphorical meanings for Muslim worshippers during their obligatory five-times daily prayer. Additionally, prayer carpets have been communicating the distinct aesthetic choices of the individual cultures who created and used them for centuries, while being recognizable as prayer carpets through their very specific design elements. This presentation will discuss the prayer carpet’s universality in terms of its use and certain design aesthetics, and will be followed by a brief discussion on how diverse Islamic cultures make this textile their own. Certain design elements and their meanings or symbolism are universal, and they point to a fluid iconography through time, place, religion, tradition, and culture.

Sumru Belger Krody joined The Textile Museum in 1994, since then she has curated or co-curated numerous exhibitions and is the author or the co-author of eight exhibition-related publications and many articles; the last two were Woven Interiors: Furnishing Early Medieval Egypt (2019), and A Nomad’s Art: Kilims of Anatolia (2018). She is also a guest lecturer for George Washington University on textile arts. She specializes in textiles from the late antique period and from the Islamic Lands. As senior curator, she leads the curatorial department of The Textile Museum collection and serves as editor-in-chief of The Textile Museum Journal. She is currently working on an upcoming spring 2023 exhibition on prayer carpets titled Prayer and Transcendence at The George Washington University Museum and The

Citation: Sumru Krody. Online Lecture - Earthly Beauty, Heavenly Art: Carpets for Prayer by Sumru Belger Krody - June 12. H-Islamart. 05-25-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/7636/discussions/7763417/lecture-earthly-beauty-heavenly-art-carpets-prayer-sumru-belger Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Islamart

Textile Museum.