Home
Tashi Shaikh and Rehana Fazli bring you, from Nigeria and their travels around the globe, their interpretation of Africa Adorned. They call their collection TAAZLI - Table Jewelry. Essentially Taazli is a bead sculpture. The flexibility of the nylon wire on which the beads are strung permits them to be ‘draped’ over coffee-table books, around giant candles, on woven fabric such as kilims and ethnic weaves and next to African bronze statues to ‘connect’ and create ‘scenes’.
"For the peoples of Africa, beads of precious metals, bronze, brass, glass, bone, shell and clay play an important role in the adornment of the body and home. They speak of values and beliefs, of achievements and status; they play roles in ritual and ceremony; they act as safeguards against evil or disease; they serve as means of appeasing ancestors or gods. In addition, glass beads, brought from Persia and China by Arab traders, and later from Europe by the Portuguese, were widely used as a form of barter."
To appreciate the African people’s attraction to these beads, one must understand that ornaments or polished objects serve to distinguish a person in his environment. They indicate his age, class, rank, and social status. They also signify all kinds of cultural values. The glass bead is one of the materials used to achieve this propriety. Others include: seeds, sea shells (cauris), bone, ivory, teeth, stones (granite, agate, amazonite, coralline…), amber, corals, bronze, silver, and gold.
We have exhibited and sold in Abuja, Nigeria, in Islamabad and Karachi in Pakistan and recently exported to Mauritius. The Taazlis are currently on exhibition at a major gallery, The Majlis Gallery, in Dubai from September 2008 , where a limited collection of 20 Taazlis are available for purchase now. Contact the gallery for further information.
We hope you will share our passion for the beads, metal ‘pendants’ and ‘charms’ we use in our creations, from many parts of the world.
