The Czech Ambassador Pavel Kafka and the First Undersecretary of the Culture Ministry for Foreign Relations Kamilia Sobhi inaugurated a remarkable exhibition from Bohemia titled Eye's Delight at the Doroub Gallery. I was invited there by Kafka, a friend since we first met at a photography exhibition and a great lover of the arts. Although Doroub has held many successful exhibitions of Arabic calligraphy, this one was unusual in that it combined Bohemian crystal with the calligraphic art. Sawsan Salem, the lady in charge of Doroub, was kind enough to receive me during the critical hours of preparing pieces for display. It turned out that Bohemian crystal calligraphy was the guest of honour in a wider calligraphy exhibition. I met with the exhibition founder Essam Hafoudh, a Czech businessman with Iraqi roots who carried the crystal pieces in four suitcases from Prague. He was careful not to display any of them in that excellent spot at the centre of the gallery lest someone should stumble and cause a disaster. He almost screamed (in a very low voice) when someone was about to hold one of the pieces, and was very firm that no one was supposed to touch them without special gloves. He had a few sets of gloves that he distributed among us. We had a long talk about his work in art, and he explained that the writing was carved into the crystal. I didn't have my reading glasses so I could not tell, especially since the lighting was too soft to make out shadows. Finally Hafoudh allowed me to touch a piece with my fingertips. He also explained how photographers in Prague avoid photographing crystals as they reflect light from all sides. He used to send his pieces to a photographer whose studio was two hours away. I explained to him that I faced the same problem when shooting Mohei El-Din Hussein's complete ceramics collection at the Library of Alexandria, and finally I had to cover all the walls of the room with black paper to avoid unnecessary reflections. Here too Hafoudh placed black material under each piece, cutting the material just so as not to interfere with the aesthetics. As the pieces came out of the boxes I wished I could express my fascination better in English. Arabic calligraphy is associated with the religion like church music in different parts of the Christian world. Khatt, the word for calligraphy in Arabic and Turkish, benefits from the alphabet being an abjad with most letters connected and so allowing for peculiar extensions and curves. Nor is it restricted to the Quran: I have seen verses of the Bible among many other inscriptions in various calligraphy exhibitions.
The main artist here is the late calligrapher Mohamed Saeed El-Sakkar, a famed Iraqi who lived in Paris for most of his career, and is sometimes called “Creator of the Alphabet”, since as he developed a new font for use in the digital world. As the BBC page mentions, he also received an award for his work on the Murals of Mecca Gate. He is an artist with a vision. Before passing away he wrote, “Any critic or historian may say that Arab calligraphy is one of the purist and most genuine branches of Arab arts, because it was not influenced by any kind of art from other nations, unlike other Arab arts or sciences, which was affected by mutual cultural exchange among nations, for instance mathematics, logic, philosophy, music, ornament, architecture and other products of culture. At the time of the redaction of the Quran, the copyists who worked on it made an effort to improve their script as an expression of their respect for the holy text. Various types of script began to develop, the shapes of letters began to improve and numerous branches of this new art began to appear…”
Bohemian crystal is equally special, however. When we were following the Golem legend and others, in the Old Town in Prague I was taken by one expensive yet very busy crystal shop. It was simply packed and most of the clients and some of the workers were Japanese. My partner does not like shopping. I looked and looked and found interesting collections, but decided to have a better look in other shops. At the square of the famous astronomical clock, I found Mozer. After stepping in, I realised that while it suited my taste it did not suit my pocket. It was beautiful enough to take me back to that shop three days later though I knew I couldn't afford it. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, what distinguished Bohemian crystal were the High Baroque engravings of the 17th century. It was engraved using the techniques of gem engraving. Interesting to know they had “deep cut” and “high relief”, and being a luxury type of art, a gem cutter to Emperor Rudolf II named Caspar Lehmann developed a personal style and school. His students moved out of Bohemia and the art suffered until, in 1700, Bohemian glass was invented. Heavy, high-lustre with original designs and rich, ostentatious ornamentation that made Bohemian glass the leading glass in the world…
After World War I the outstanding figure in Czech glass art was Josef Drahoňovský. In a glass conference in London, he said, “Glass is a material that absorbs rays, breaks them up, scatters or gathers them, and is full of reflections and wonderful light. It bears shadows on its light side, and light on its shaded side, turning the laws of sculpture on their head, and forcing the artist into new ways of working.” With Arabic calligraphy carved into it, it also forces the viewer and the collector into new ways of looking, taking their breath away.
