Flowing down the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, we've come to their point of closest conjunction until they reach the sea. So we've floated past Tell Asmar, Khafajah and Sippar and find ourselves at Jemdet Nasr and the wonderful Babylon, city of legend with it's blue Ishtar Gates, heaven scraping tower and hanging gardens
Obviously I can't create all those wonderful things in the small space allotted to me in this work, but I am trying to give an impression of increasing complexity given that here, lower down on the great alluvial plain, the serious business of irrigation, cultivation and specialisation really took off. Jemdet Nasr, here marked by a dark red-brown piece of agate, became a "type site", that is a site where a specific collection of artefacts are so distinctive that they mark some sort of change in culture: in this case, painted pottery, proto cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals.
And below I have marked Babylon with a triangle of turquoise for the Ishtar Gate and the high ziggurat, but I've also tried to evoke a sense of a city surrounded by gardens, cultivated land and waterways bringing that all important source of life.
Meanwhile, further north, up in the highlands I have added a new city, not on my original list. This is Mari, founded in 2900 BC as a nexus for the various trade routes which were developing and expanding as civilisation spread, goods moved across land and water, and supply and demand became the way of life. It was connected to the Euphrates by a canal, giving access to the major trade route, but protecting the city from flooding. It may well get more stitching, though I am keeping cities to the north relatively simple as a contrast to the luxuries in the south.
And in entirely different but still stitchy news, I am still working on the crewel work piece that I started in Fay Maxwell's workshop with the EG, back in November. The branches are coming along nicely; combinations of fly and feather stitch with raised chain band and French knots for texture.
The design is loosely based on the piece of fabric below, a sketchbook cover I made in a wonderful Sandra Brownlee workshop (at Studio 11). The fabric came from one of Ganna's cushions, the imagery on the fabric inspired by motifs from crewel embroidery
It amused me to take a crewel work inspired design and translate it back into crewel embroidery, but now with a modern twist.
I've played freely with the design, not least because freehand cutting of the felt pieces dictated a broad brush approach! It is amusing me, and is stitching on a totally different scale to Mesopotamia, which really requires a good light and plenty of magnification!!
Hope your stitching is going well wherever your creative spirit lies.
