Griffins and Booties

Wed 10 Oct

Spent the morning writing postcards which I still haven't sent, four days later. *sigh*

Was skimming through Lonely Planet looking for inspiration and discovered I was near a little museum in Arrasta Bazaar. It was little, quiet and occupied by only 4 German tourists and, I can safely say it's been a highlight of the trip. Beautiful Byzantine Mosaics from the palace were excavated here by Austrians a couple of decades ago and they're fantastic. There are bucolic scenes, animals, mythical creatures and the usual carnage one wouldn't expect from such a dainty craft. The work has been beautifully restored with lots of descriptive panels about the process (five points to the Austrians). There are some terrific mosaics of elephants fighting lions and about 5 different types of griffin: topkapi headed, lion headed, leopard headed etc. There's even a monkey poking dates out of a tree. Is that a double entendre?

Then strolled to Turkish and Islamic Arts Musem. Got a rug dose without being dragged into a shop kicking and screaming. Museum grounds were in an Ottoman palace for the Grand Vizier and were oosh-bagoosh. The collection was pretty amazing. They had a whole section dedicated to matriarchal Anatolian artisanship, which is exactly how it should be. I recoil making a passing judgement, but from my eyes, Turkish society is unfortuantely still pretty sexist, so a craft exhibition is one step on a long path (not unlike the UNSW Women's collective holding a cake stall c. 2000 for Women's week. pht.) The museum showed all the tools, dyes and yarns used for weaving kilims, rugs etc. Triffic.

After that scooted over to Dolmabace Palace to get a dose of tack. It was with the horded detritus of the last Sultans' reigns and it's truly disgusting. Aside from some bigger than Oprah chandeliers the palace is full of crap and everything is engraved and gilded to within an inch of its life with no sense of style or aesthetic. I felt like i was being slowly bludgeoned to death with a red velvet and brocade cushion with crystal embossing from Copperart. The guides were at 'capacity' which meant we learnt nothing more than the name of the room and which of the moth-eaten bear rugs was given by the Tzar of Russia to hoo hoo the Sultan blah blah blah. The guards demanded that we stick to the red carpet with our little pink plastic booties which had to cover your whole shoe. I dared to step off to peer into a bathroom (which was about 2 metres away) and was strictly reprimanded. At the end of the tour our disposable booties were thrown into bins already full of pink-bootie-sweat. Environmentally friendly? No. Gross? Extremely.