From the Craftswoman’s Hand to the City’s Memory

Keywords

Irthi; Sharjah; traditional crafts; Al Talli; Al Sadu; knowledge transfer; contemporary design.

The life of a craft is not measured only by its ability to produce a beautiful object. It is measured by its ability to transmit knowledge, renew it, and find a place for it in the present city. This is what makes Irthi significant: it approaches craft as skill, memory, economy, and institution at once.

Craft is knowledge carried by hand and memory

Craft does not begin when an object is complete. It begins in a hand that understands the resistance of thread, an eye that distinguishes a shade of colour, and a memory that knows how material becomes useful and beautiful. Craftsmanship is therefore more than the form of a product; it is knowledge carried through the body, time, and the relationship between teacher and learner.

UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage describes living heritage as practices, knowledge, and skills transmitted by communities and recreated as their environments and histories change. From this perspective, safeguarding craft means preserving the conditions of continuity, not only its visible image.

Sharjah: where craft meets contemporary art

In Sharjah, this knowledge has a distinctive institutional setting. The city has been part of UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network in the field of Crafts and Folk Art since 2019, while the Sharjah Art Foundation opens spaces for workshops, learning, and experimentation. Two institutional paths meet here: one places craft and craftswomen at its centre, represented by Irthi; the other creates a wider artistic space for traditional skill to enter contemporary art and design.

This meeting does not erase the difference between the two institutions. Irthi’s specificity lies in its dedicated work with crafts and craftswomen and in linking skill to documentation, innovation, and circulation. The Sharjah Art Foundation adds an artistic and educational context that expands the dialogue between craft, design, and contemporary practice.

Irthi and the craft cycle: from skill to value

Irthi’s approach to safeguarding does not stop at displaying a product or celebrating its symbolism. It works on the conditions that allow practice to continue. Training and exchange programmes connect craftswomen’s skills to new markets, while design laboratories bring designers, craftswomen, and trainees together to exchange knowledge, making, and design.

In this model, craft does not remain outside the contemporary economy. It enters it as knowledge and as a contribution to value creation. I describe this as the ‘craft cycle’: memory preserves knowledge, education transfers it, design expands its possibilities, markets recognise its value, and institutions preserve its future trace.

Al Talli and Al Sadu: skill as a social relationship

Al Talli reveals the precision of this approach. It is made by interlacing cotton threads—usually six—separated by a silver thread, producing colourful forms whose symbols are connected to desert and sea life. The skill is transmitted in homes, courses, workshops, and cultural occasions, where practical knowledge meets storytelling and social connection.

Al Sadu shows the same principle. It is not a fixed geometric pattern, but a practice learned gradually through observation and sustained by weaving communities. Safeguarding Al Sadu therefore cannot be separated from research, documentation, knowledge transfer, and economic support. Preserving the form without sustaining the community that carries the skill does not fulfil the cultural purpose.

When technology becomes an assisting memory, not a replacement for the hand

Irthi’s work also opens an important field of research and documentation. Publicly reported projects include the study of new textile fibres from local plants, the development of dyes from food waste, the documentation of weaving techniques through three-dimensional scanning, and the preservation of craftswomen’s knowledge and observations in archives and educational materials.

The significance of this work is that technology does not replace the hand; it creates an assisting memory for it. A three-dimensional scan may preserve a sequence of movement or a form of weaving, but it gains meaning only when it returns to teaching, practice, and a hand capable of interpreting what it sees.

The cycle is completed when craft moves beyond the workshop to a wider public through trading platforms, collections developed with artists and designers, and a museum dedicated to preserving contemporary crafts and documenting their evolution. The workshop, archive, design, market, and museum become connected stages in the life of craft.

Conclusion: a future built from its first material

Irthi’s value lies in refusing to treat craft as a remnant of a vanished time. Craft is knowledge capable of making a future from its first material. Textile remains alive not because its threads have been stored, but because someone knows how to pull them, when to change their colour, and how to give them their next form.

Craft is not safeguarded by freezing its image. It is safeguarded by keeping it capable of learning, making, developing, and circulating.

References

This is a cultural analysis by Dr. Omar Aljomaily. The factual references are attributed to the official sources listed above.

From the Craftswoman’s Hand to the City’s Memory: Irthi and the Renewal of Craft in Sharjah