Issue #24 ✿ Boteh 🥭 Craft and design journeys between East and West
This issue navigates a path between East and West. We try to avoid the one-way paths: West-bound progress and East-bound orientalism. Our path follows a life form that is transmitted over time as one of the world’s most distinctive motifs. The form begins in ancient Persia, with a design based on a cypress tree bending in the wind: boteh. It morphs into similar forms, including mango, almond, flower bud, until it arrives in the West as paisley.
In Western progress, destination supersedes origin: the latest is always better than what came before. In this issue, we try to redress this by re-introducing the original Persian word.
Thanks to weaver Liz Williamson for finding this path. You can trace its journey here.
Thanks also to our Pathfinders who helped develop this concept: Audrey & Arif Satar, Bernard Kerr, Blake Griffiths, Helen Ting, Jude van der Merwe, Kaamya Sharma, Liz Williamson, LOkesh Ghai, Madhvi Subrahmanian, Manasee Jog, Michele Elliot, Priyanka Jain, Sandra Bowkett, Susie Vickery and Wuthigrai Siriphon.
Indian Ocean Craft Triennial
- Remembering Kala Pani: Presencing memory objects by Audrey & Arif Satar
- The Curious Five Go Surfing: A collaboration across the Indian Ocean by Susie Vickery
- Exile from the Forest: Craft collaboration in the time of COVID by Ishan Khosla
- The world in a tea towel: Weaving cartographic abstractions by Nien Schwarz
- That significant freedom: The idea of Indian Ocean craft by John Mateer
- Nalda Searles ✿ Re-gifted in red by Nalda Searles, Andrew Nichols, Sandra Murray
- Shedding, dwelling, making: The artist collective We Must Get Together Some Time by Greg Pryor
Going East
- Kôgei between Japan and Brazil: The ceramics of Shoko Suzuki by Liliana Morais
- The gate is open: Guan Wei and Jayne Dyer in China by Pamela See
- East and west, warp and weft by Blake Griffiths
- Eastern glazes: The provenance of celadon, tenmoku and shino by Sandra Bowkett
- Water, Wood and Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town – review by D Wood
- Colour thrives: The lokta paper makers of Kathmandu by Gary Wornell
- How the dye was cast on the road back to Laos by Samorn Sanixay
- Yangon Alley Garden: A trail of paper flowers between Myanmar and Fremantle by Marina Lommerse
Eastern revival
- Pesh boro: Epic weaving from Afghanistan by Khadim Ali
- Shaabook silver jewellery in Oman: A secret currency of adornment by Amal Ismaili
- A Circular Narrative of Craft & Culture from the Himalayas (Kullu Valley) by LOkesh Ghai
- The influence of shibori on Indonesian textile maker into collaborative project with generation Z by Janet Teowarang
- The soul of Feng Huang: Contemporary Pesisir Batik Motif in Fashion by Enrico Ho
- Jember Batik: The dragon rises by Geraldus Sugeng
- Ikebana: A flower arrangement in search of poetry by Shoso Shimbo
The wider world
- The forest on my flesh by Priyanka Jain
- “Things from before”: Baskets in Gorongosa by Frances Potter
- Kumbharwada: Make in Dharavi by Nidhi Agrawal
- Zhuizi: An ordinary dog’s tale by Helen Ting
- The Fidan doll: A bridge between Turkey and Japan by Songül ARAL
- A future for waste: Upcycling fashion for Gen Z in Indonesia by Janet Teowarang
- Made in Indonesia: The rise of handmade shoes by Rahayu Budhi Handayani