Rare Egyptian tapestries on exhibit in Sonoma

Back in 1952 Ramses Wissa Wassef and his wife Sophie had an idea. What if young children were freed to unleash their raw creativity without the constraints of a formal art education or expert criticism? What would the art look like?

The result is a unique body of work - a collection of tapestries created through the Art Centre Ramses Wissa Wassef in the village of Harrania near Giza, outside Cairo. Each piece is created directly on the loom, without sketches or designs, geometric patterns or textbooks.

An exhibit of more than 25 these weavings, representing the work of both students and original artists who started in the program more than 60 years ago, will be displayed at The Sonoma Valley Museum of Art in a new exhibit, “An Accomplishment in Creativity: The Egyptian Children’s Tapestries.”

The weavings are part of the collection of David B. Williams, a Sonoma man who is an authority on Egyptian tapestries. He has collected more than 200 pieces from the studio a Harrania.

“The message of this exhibit is that any ordinary person, anywhere, has withing themselves the potential for the highest creative accomplishment,” Williams said in a written release.

A maverick Egyptian educator and architect Ramses Wissa Wassef believed that anyone has the potential to create outstanding art within the right environment. He believed that key to that is giving them the chance to develop their innate abilities while they are still young, before they become set in the mold of a traditional environment.

He had three rules for his artists: no outside artistic influences, no copying or imitation and no adult criticism or interference.

Wassef chose weaving as his medium because it taps into the deeply rooted weaving tradition of the village’s Coptic Christian ancestors of more than a century ago.

“I had this vague conviction that every human being was born an artist, but that his or her gifts could be brought out only if artistic activity was encouraged from early childhood by way of practicing a craft... The creative energy of the average person is being sapped by a conformist system of education and the extension of industrial technology to every sphere of modern life,” he once said.

Nine of the dozen or so children who started with the program in 1952 still weave at the Wissa Wassef studio today under the guidance of Sophie Wissa Wassef. A new generation of weavers guided by the Wissa Wassef’s daughters Suzanne and Yoanna, continue to produce wool and cotton tapestries that are singular works of art. Ramses Wissa Wasef died in 1974.

Williams has been collecting Harrania tapestries since the 1970s. In 1971 he mounted in a Sonoma weaving shop, the first exhibition in the U.S. of Harrania tapestries.

Since then his collection has grown to more than 200 pieces and has been seen at the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago and more than 100 museums and university galleries throughout the United States.

The museum is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays. Admission is $5 for adults and free for children up to age 12. Museum members also are admitted free of charge. 551 Broadway, a half block down from the Sonoma Plaza. For information visit svma.org or call 939-7862.

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204. On Twitter @megmcconahey.