A Prayer Wheel Quilt

Red Prayer Wheel Quilt (2005)
114 x 148 cm 

An old Tibetan monk tells me the soul has no memory; the dead do not feel their past. This is left to the living. 

 (Colin Thurbon, 'To a Mountain in Tibet', 10) 

It was on our first day in Kathmandu that we visited Boudhanath and walked around the base of the Stupa in a clockwise direction spinning the prayer wheels as we went.

Is the past a foreign country?

So this is where it starts. An exhibition of quilts from India, Pakistan & Bangladesh, South Asian Seams at the International Quilt Center & Museum. I was in Lincoln, Nebraska for the Textile Society of America conference where I first presented research on quilts and this blog. I had walked through the first room past quilts from Bangladesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Maharasahtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Gujarat--then round a corner into the second room, and here it was a charpoy (bed/day bed) covered with a quilt from Southern Sindh in Pakistan. The applique technique is a hallmark of the work of the Muslim Charhan quilters, which often includes mirrors and sequins. This quilt was made sometime between 1950 and 1980.
Yet that's the technical part, my response to coming across the charpoy extends even wider and deeper than my interest in quilts...all of a sudden

A visit to 'Curious Colony'

Image from: When I grow up I want to be a forger (2010)

by

Joan Ross 

On Friday I visited the 'Curious Colony' exhibition now on at the SH Ervin Gallery until February 20. It was a review of this exhibition at the Newcastle Regional Art Gallery (10 July - 29 August 2010) that started me thinking about the Cabinet of Curiosities. I had missed seeing the exhibition in Newcastle but here was the opportunity to see the Newcastle Chest for myself, as well as the rest of the exhibition.
The Chest is fascinating, its contents as curious as should be, not only was I fascinated by