Hidden gems in the Jameel Gallery

The Jameel Gallery at the V&A holds around 400 treasures from across the Islamic Middle East, produced between the 8th century and our own time. 

We invited four people with a strong link to art and design from the Middle East to select a hidden gem – an object that, for them, stands out from everything else in the gallery. 

All four are involved in the visual arts – as an artist, a ceramicist, a fashion designer and an architect – and we asked them to tell us how the piece they chose connects to their practice. 

Come and seek out these gems in the museum this summer!

Zelal Basodan, Ceramic Artist

Zelal Basodan is a ceramic artist from Saudi Arabia. She has chosen a spectacular 15th-century bowl with a ship sailing across the centre. The huge bowl was made in tin-glazed earthenware, with decoration painted over the glaze in lustre, lending the surface an iridescent sheen. Lustre was first applied to ceramics like this in Iraq in the 9th century, and the practice then spread to other parts of the Islamic world. 

As Zelal remarks, potters of the Islamic world were chemists with an innovative approach to their materials, as well as extraordinarily gifted artists. In her own work, Zelal applies contemporary techniques such as 3D printing and laser-cutting to ceramics. Connecting her choice from the Jameel Gallery with objects in the V&A’s Ceramics Galleries, Zelal describes how she has reclaimed the lustre technique and is now developing it from her own perspective.

Zelal was a Jameel Fellow at the V&A in 2024.

Jumana Emil Abboud, Artist

Jumana Emil Abboud is an artist from Palestine. Her hidden gem is the depiction of the Archangel Michael on a ceramic dish made for an Armenian priest. In his left hand, the winged archangel brandishes a sword, while in his right he holds the soul of the dead man who lies beneath his feet. The plate was made in Kütahya in western Türkiye, where both Muslim Turks and Christian Armenians were involved in ceramic production for several hundred years. Its rim is inscribed in Armenian with the words, ‘This is the Archangel’, and the date 1168 in the Armenian calendar, equivalent to AD 1718–19. 

For Jumana, the Archangel resembles a water spirit who appears to her in a dream. Her creative practice engages deeply with water, folklore and story-telling. It includes a collaborative project focused on wells and water sources in Palestine, particularly in areas where cultural heritage is under threat. The Archangel Michael reminds us of the ways museum objects can spark our imagination and tell stories.

Jumana is currently a 2024 Jameel Fellow at the V&A. Her Fellowship is a partnership with Cirva, Marseille.

Nour Hage, Fashion Designer

Nour Hage is a fashion designer and artist from Lebanon. She has selected a very unassuming object: a filter that once spanned the neck of a humble clay water bottle, designed to keep out flies and dust. In the filters, though, the anonymous potters showed their artistic abilities, piercing them to create abstract patterns, calligraphic inscriptions and animal figures such as the camel on this one. The filter and its bottle were unglazed, and the porous clay allowed water to evaporate very gradually through the sides, keeping the water inside cool. 

Nour was struck by the way the maker of this object brought such intricacy to something so practical. She liked the idea of the design being visible only to the person using the vessel; in her own work, she tucks subtle historical references into the details of the clothing she designs.

Nour was a Jameel Fellow at the V&A in 2020/21, and you can read about her experience here: Nour Hage / Jameel Fellowship • V&A Blog (vam.ac.uk) Two of her works – Abaya 01, 2018,and My Umuma, 2022 – are now part of the permanent collection. 

Shahed Saleem, Architect

Shahed Saleem is a British architect. His hidden gem is a panel assembled from fifteen 13th–century star-and-cross tiles from a tomb in Iran. When Shahed designed the Hackney Road Mosque in 2014, these tiles inspired the form of the façade. The mosque was originally founded by the Bangladeshi community in the 1980s, in a Victorian house with a small workshop at the back. Shahed’s job was to expand the workshop, which served as the prayer hall, and unite the two parts of the building. Shahed took the geometric design of the tiles and played with the scale of its details. The evolution of the design nods to the new chapter for the mosque and its community. 

Shahed was the designer of Three British Mosques, the V&A Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2021, and the Ramadan Pavilion at the V&A in 2023.