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Turquoise Mountain Brings Traditional Craft to the World Stage
The charity’s Patterns of Faith and Weaving Poems exhibitions at Sotheby’s London celebrate traditional crafts of the Middle East and Afghanistan.
F or nearly 20 years, the London-based charity Turquoise Mountain has retained a simple mission: to support artisans from troubled parts of the globe in revitalizing, facilitating and exporting their traditional arts and crafts to prestigious clients, institutions and collaborators around the world.
Simple, yes – but in a world riven with geopolitical turmoil and strife, far from an easy one. Yet in the two decades since King Charles III and former British politician Rory Stewart founded the charity, Turquoise Mountain boasts a remarkable track record of success.
This past summer, to kick off a year of commemorative events to mark their 20th anniversary in 2026, Turquoise Mountain teamed up with Sotheby’s to present Weaving Poems, a collection of 24 beautiful carpets created by Afghan designer Maryam Omar and the women weavers of Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province. Fourteen of the carpets were on view at Sotheby’s London through July and August as part of HAFLA: A Celebration of Middle Eastern Art, honoring Afghanistan’s deep weaving traditions.
Organized by Turquoise Mountain, the exhibit had previously appeared at Qatar Museums’ inaugural Design Doha biennale in 2024, where it blended carpet designs with audio recordings of weavers chanting traditional poems. At Doha, Design Director Glenn Adamson described it as the “beating heart of the biennale.”
Next, on October 24, 2025, Turquoise Mountain will return to Sotheby’s London with an ambitious new exhibition: Patterns of Faith: Living Traditions in Islamic Art. Developed in partnership with the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, the display will showcase masterworks of Islamic craftsmanship created by Afghan, Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian and Saudi artisans.
The exhibition is part of Sotheby’s annual season of Islamic, Indian and Middle Eastern art. Visitors will encounter a wide range of techniques – painted and inlaid woodwork, glass blowing, tile-making, calligraphy and more – represented in objects such as a marquetry minbar, Qur’an stands, mosque carpets and tiles, a painted ‘ajami ceiling, glass mosque lamps, carved doors and fretwork panels. Originally commissioned by Ithra for its permanent collection, these works will be shown in London for the first time and made available for bespoke commissions from master artisans through Turquoise Mountain.
“Collaborating with Turquoise Mountain and Sotheby’s underscores Ithra’s efforts to champion Islamic material culture as a valuable cultural asset,” says Farah Abushullaih, Head of the Ithra Museum. “Craft is durable knowledge – held in people’s hands, tools and materials – and it is essential to cultural continuity.”
The exhibition will also be accompanied by talks and events that highlight Turquoise Mountain’s collaborations across the Islamic world, from Syria to Saudi Arabia.
“Craft is durable knowledge – held in people’s hands, tools and materials – and it is essential to cultural continuity.”
- Farah Abushullaih, Head of the Ithra Museum
Talking to President Shoshana Stewart and Creative Director Dr. Thalia Kennedy, the word “heritage” surfaces often. Turquoise Mountain’s network of over 500 staff, most drawn from the communities where they work, continues to support artisans across Afghanistan, Myanmar, Jordan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Over the past 20 years, the charity has restored more than 170 buildings, provided primary education to thousands of children, created tens of thousands of jobs, and sustained thousands of artisans through long-term partnerships.
Asked for examples of the charity’s work in empowering artisans, Stewart’s and Kennedy’s eyes sparkled. Where to start? There’s their ongoing partnership with Ithra building on the Museum’s 2024 exhibition In Praise of the Artisan, in which works by master artisans from Afghanistan, Jordan, Palestine and Syria were exhibited.
In January 2024 a project at The Connaught, a five-star hotel in London, saw a breathtaking makeover of one of its most exclusive suites, renamed The King’s Lodge, that followed The Prince’s Lodge, the hotel’s first collaboration with the charity back in 2010. The vision of the hotel’s designer, Guy Oliver, the sumptuous Kings Lodge suite features hand-tooled work from 100 Turquoise Mountain-affiliated artisans from across the world. Kennedy recalls how it layered different traditions under a single visual narrative.
“Guy Oliver’s design brief particularly emphasized Moghul design, which has a historic resonance in Afghanistan. Some production took place in Myanmar, but we made carpets and miniature paintings in Afghanistan, while the fine woodwork carvings were completed by Syrians working in Amman,” Kennedy says. “Then we worked with motif designers from India to think about the visual language, and with master carvers in Jaipur for the stone carved elements.”
This style of international collaboration and cultural exchange has become something of Turquoise Mountain’s specialty. The organization’s role is to handle “everything relating to quality control, sourcing and verification of materials,” adds Stewart. “We do that because that is what the world demands.”
Such projects exemplify the stellar standards of craftsmanship available to Turquoise Mountain’s collaborators and the sheer scope of talent available via their network. The charity spreads its net wide: in Amman, for example, they recently connected local jewelry workshops with British designers Pippa Small and Jinks McGrath, as well as perfumier Jo Malone. London’s V&A museum has also partnered with them to promote Afghan jewelry and craftsmanship by including Turquoise Mountain's jewelry collections, such as a pair of Lapis Lazuli Lattice Drop Earrings and a Malachite Flower Ring in the museum’s gift shops.
Meanwhile, in Jab’a, in the Palestinian West Bank, Turquoise Mountain has provided an essential route to global markets for master glass blower Mohammad Twam via the charity’s showrooms in Amman and international clients, who commission him directly.
These examples barely begin to demonstrate the colossal sphere of activity generated by Turquoise Mountain. And it all proves an undeniable truth: the protective bulwark offered by grassroots artisanal production can help counteract the vicissitudes of war, extreme poverty and the generational fade of traditional artisanship.
“I find that it’s the combination of cultural heritage and economic development,” says Stewart of her core mission. “Fundamentally, people need to be able to feed their families, so the economic bit of what we do has to work. That is about people bringing products to market. Much of what I do is bringing the work of these artisans to the global market and winning more commissions for them.”
“Carpet weaving is a delicate, beautiful and pleasant craft.”
- Shekiba, Traditional Weaver in Afghanistan
This is demonstrated beautifully in the Sotheby’s collaboration, Weaving Poems, which showcases the charity’s long and fruitful engagement with artisans of the beleaguered nation. Over the years, Turquoise Mountain has supported thousands of Afghan women artisans, predominantly weavers, but also sustaining woodworking, ceramics, calligraphy and jewelry-making, once thriving exemplars of the region’s identity.
As the exhibition’s title suggests, the carpets are inspired by poems traditionally chanted by weavers as they gather at their looms before setting to work. The rugs are woven from locally-sourced spun wool, using natural and mineral dyes. Encountering these textiles, shaped and colored by the stunning Bamiyan valley’s landscapes, one can’t help but imagine a magical sense of sand, stone, sky and harmony.
“Carpet weaving is a delicate, beautiful and pleasant craft,” says Shekiba, one of the women whose delicate weaving is included in the full Weaving Poems exhibition. “Working with my hands means I provide for myself. It is my hard work. It is my creation. It is my contribution to my family’s income. In addition to contributing to my family’s income it is a contribution to saving and flourishing my country’s culture and art.”
“We hope more people will come forward, to enable more commissions,” says Stewart about Turquoise Mountain’s plans and hopes for the future. “We’d love to work more particularly with clients who are involved with developing mosques, hospitality clients and, of course, private clients who are interested in our story. That’s my biggest wish.”
Both Weaving Poems and the upcoming Patterns of Faith underscore a central truth of Turquoise Mountain’s mission: that the protective bulwark of artisanal production not only preserves cultural identity but also sustains families and communities through meaningful economic opportunity.
