Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Arts
In a village between Dibab and Tiwi on the old Qurayat-Sur coast road, the porches of
several houses sport splendid pink or lime-green bathroom tiles, complete with fern mo-
tifs. Next door to one of these houses, the remains of an intricately hand-carved door lay
disintegrating for years until weather, or an entrepreneur from Muscat, or both, put paid to
it. It's not a case of out with the old and in with the new, but a demonstration of Oman's
commercial relationship with art: a job lot of Indian tiles for a camel-bag of incense (or
the modern-day equivalent) is the kind of international exchange that has characterised the
pragmatic nature of Omani arts and crafts for centuries. It's not unusual, for example, to
find the family silver (particularly grandmother's jewellery) making the journey to Muscat
because wife number two prefers gold. Before they became items of tourist value, exquis-
ite pieces of silver were readily melted down and returned in kind from the gold souq. In
fact, for centuries most silver jewellery was fashioned from Oman's old currency (smelted
Maria Theresa dollars, or
thalla
), prized for its 80%-plus silver content.
Oman's arts and crafts are all the more wonderful for being about the living rather than
the dead, the practical rather than the purely decorative. Whether this heritage can with-
stand rapid modernisation is another matter.
Traditional Crafts
There are many crafts in Oman, all of which have been meticulously documented through
the Omani Craft Heritage Documentation Project, under the auspices of His Highness
Seyyid Shibah bin Tariq al-Said and endorsed by Unesco.
Each region of Oman is associated with a different craft - Bahla is famous for pottery,
Nizwa for silver jewellery, Jebel Shams for rug-weaving, Sur for boat-building, Shway-
miyah for basket-making. For a definitive survey of Omani crafts, the twin-volume
The
Craft Heritage of Oman,
by Neil Richardson and Marcia Dorr, makes a superb souvenir.
Avelyn Forster's book
Disappearing Treasures of Oman
focuses on the silver Bedouin
jewellery of Oman.
For more information on Oman's rich craft industry, see the website of the
Public Author-
ity for Craft Industries
(
24 525944;
www.paci.gov.om
)
.
Music & Dance
There are dozens of traditional song and dance forms in Oman, over 130 of which have
been documented by the
Oman Centre for Traditional Music
(
24 602127;
www.octm-folk.gov.om
)
,
