The Collection

The story of this piece

Twenty-two thread colours cover every inch of this ivory ground with a meadow of flowers — no two the same, no space left plain. Shameema worked this with her students through two seasons; the colour is her own composition, drawn from no existing talim.

A note on the hand. Shameema works sozni — the finest needlework Kashmir produces. She prefers walnut-dyed thread and works only in daylight, beside a window that faces east. Her father was a copyist of Quranic manuscripts; she says she inherited the steady hand, not the calligraphy.