Pages of history written in the spirit of art by the creative Damascene craftsman

Damascus-SANA

A person can only stand amazed at the nobility and mastery of the Damascene craftsman.. With this sentence, Mrs. Maha expressed her astonishment at the wood carved art pieces that decorated the exhibition hall of the Arab Cultural Center in Abu Rummaneh within an art exhibition entitled “Damascus, the capital of crafts” by artisans Adnan Fayoumi and Talal Bedouin.

Maha, who read the exhibition announcement as part of her continuous follow-up to the center’s page, found an opportunity to learn about this art through the ages and its impact on Arab and Islamic civilization through the different forms of inscriptions and types of wood used.

During SANA’s cultural tour of the exhibition, we were stopped by these pieces of art, which seemed to be pages of history, written in an aesthetic artistic spirit that spilled over the spirit of wood, so it was spoken in the language of the Damascene civilization that started from this land and continued throughout history.

And because the support of the craft is the basis for its continuation, Naji Al-Hamwi, head of the General Union of Craftsmen, considered that these exhibitions contribute to the support of our heritage crafts because they know the public and the media at the level reached by the Syrian creator, as well as being a message for the Syrian civilized art that has reached all over the world.

The audience in the center’s exhibition hall was not satisfied with watching the exhibits, but they also gathered in the center’s hall to listen to the talk of the participants in the heritage symposium that accompanied him, entitled “The Evolution of the Art of Crafts and Engraving on Wood in the Arab and Islamic Civilization.”

The symposium presented by Dr. Ammar Al-Nahar, during which Khaled Fayyad, Secretary of the Artisans Magazine, presented a definition of the history of this art, pointing out that the ancient Damascene heritage is the result of civilizational accumulations from previous eras, pointing to the role of archaeological discoveries in revealing the emergence of crafts and types of wood that were used in the courts of kings and sultans, where Many of them are preserved in Syrian museums.

Fayyad talked about the types of inlays used in engraving on wood, some of which date back to 2400 BC, and about the different forms of grafting, pointing to the emergence of different styles of engraving, including the Pharaonic, Byzantine and Islamic engravings in Syrian sculpture, which differed in the Umayyad and Abbasid eras, where the shape and substance changed and the adoption of deep engraving began. and botanical shapes.

Al-Fayyad considered that the golden age of engraving was in the Mamluk era, which is considered the era of artistic luxury and the Ayyubid era in which engraving appeared in mosques and pulpits, pointing to the excellence of the Qutaybai minaret in the Umayyad Mosque, which is considered the most beautiful minaret in the world by introducing Kufic script to its decorations.

And because the craftsman’s spirit and skill are the basis for transforming a piece of wood into a painting, the craftsman Adnan Fayoumi took the audience on a journey about this craft, its advantages, phases, details, and the types of wood used, especially the hard ones such as walnuts, roses, olives and eucalyptus.

According to Fayoumi, this craft has a number of secrets, including the timing of cutting wood and the skill of using the tools used in engraving and engraving.

Fayoumi still uses various decorations in his work that represent the Umayyad, Fatimid, Abbasid and Ayyubid eras, indicating that he inherited this profession and made simple modifications from his spirit to the Arabic calligraphy and introduced harmonious geometric shapes.

Mays Al Ani