maariku

I keep hearing from dancers, at my location as well as in the forum, that besides all the necessary (of course )dance stuff, everybody keeps stacking their homes with oriental artifacts. I was just wondering what kind of things are those? Because even though I am madly in love with the dance and I try to look into the background and the culture as much as possible, when I look around my house, it isn't really evident... (unless you look into the cd and dvd cabinet or my closet ). But right now I am writing this post at a friend's place who is a dance teacher. All her windows are covered with glass paintings of dancers... And she recently designed her own curtains - intensive red with a larger-than-life dancer and a tabla player in gold on them.

So, confess, what is your home like

Suhad

Oriental rugs, both authentic and copies all over the house...hookah on the floor in the family room...gigantic pillows for sitting on, smaller ones for decoration, tapestries,...walls overwashed to look like older plaster...dancer posters in the kitchen/family room area. Nah, no overlap here!

Hubby is gonna freak when I start painting the furniture with those intricate Mosaic designs!

Yshka

My home, well erh... room is all Asian lol. Many pillows though some of which look oriental, but the rest consists of Chinese objects, buddha's, vases...

I do own a small gold genie-oil-lamp though

The only think Oriental about my room then would be that particular lamp and the inside of my closet too.

Suhad

What attracts me to the more Moroccan themed type stuff is the richness of the color and texture, and what I perceive as the sophistication of the culture embodied by the style. I did have to draw the line at buying a real sofa at the thrift store tho...hubby wanted to know why I needed a big ugly coffee table that was too low to the ground; I had to sheepishly explain what it was and listen to him flatly refuse to sit on something like that. Well, in honesty he had a point, I don't think my inlaws could get down low enough to sit on it, and I don't have risers in my family room to put it on. So I still have a regular one, but lots and lots of floor cushions, low stools/chairs, and tables to keep me happy.

I live in the desert and I have noticed that wherever in the world people live in a mostly muted brown/tan environment their homes are filled with a riot of color. It fills a human need, I think.

Aisha Azar

Dear Suhad,
If you are interested in texture and color, you might be interested in collecting sadou, as I am doing. Sadou is the fabric that originally was woven by Bedouin in the Gulf and SaudiArabia. They made everything out of it from camel bags to the walls of their Bait Al Shaar (tents, or literally "House of Hair). According to one gentleman who gave me several of the pieces hanging in my house, each tribe had its own design. According to another guy, one of the smaller hangings in my house is the design of a certain Kuwaiti tribe. I have a couple of camel bags, some small strips of it that I have on my walls, several bags just for keeping stuff in, and I also got a big length of machine made modern sadou from a freind. I re-covered my dining room chairs with it.
You might also look into the pillows and "table cloths" which are actually to put food on. I have one set of the table cloth and three or four large pillow covers. I adore them.
You could collect incense burners and incence. The very best is called Oud (wood) and it is delicious. It comes in slivers of wood. I also have frankincense from Yemen.
Della are cool, too. They are the coffee pots with the long spouts. You can also buy the little tea glasses that look like tiny root beer glasses.
There are tons of ways to go if you are looking for Middle Eastern stuff.
Regards,
A'isha

Amulya

I have lots of indian stuff. Furniture, paintings, those door decorations etc. You might find a straying darbuka once in a while, and fabric for costumes. For the rest not so much, exept the DVDs and CDs

Got some pictures :
http://www.realestate.com.au/objects...1156297235.jpg

http://www.realestate.com.au/objects...1156297238.jpg

http://www.realestate.com.au/objects...1156297246.jpg

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Sara

Thats sooo pretty Amulya.

You wouldn't be able to tell in my house what so ever! My room is all calm and floaty. And now I have these blinds and they are sooo fun! I can open and close em from my bed the strings that long. It's hilarious to watch them open then close, then open. As you can prolly tell. I'm easily impressed. But if you have em- give it a go.

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Darbla

I'm planning to decorate my bedroom in this exotic fashion. My house is a very rustic, Old West ranch type (log siding, lots of wood on the inside) but my bedroom is not. It has a dark blue ceiling and a border around the tops of the walls, just under the ceiling, that is dark blue with gold suns, moons, and stars all around it. And I have a large framed print of "Night with Her Train of Stars" ( Night with Her Train of Stars Prints by Edward Robert Hughes at AllPosters.com ) over the head of the bed. My bedding is dark and other shades of blue with gold suns, moons, and stars.

I think I'm going to figure out how to hang dark blue, lighter blue, silver, and maybe white satin on the walls and create a more sumptuous ambience in the room. I knew I should've ordered that genie lamp when I placed an order with Moondance recently!

Darbla

janaki

I have 3 shishas, one each from India, Egypt and Turkey in my sitting room. I have floor mattresses with lots of cushions and boltsters in velvet( I made them myself). All the fabrics I use have somekind of middleeatern flavlour to them. Then in on corner, I call it my music and dance corner, I have all my cds' and dvds'. And also I have 4 tablas, one big Saidi drum, Mizmar, ney, Riqs of various sizes and shapes. (in the process of getting an Oud, Rebab) I bought these from the gypsies of Egypt and they are so precious to me. I also have other intruments from other countries too. I have tea pot sets from Morocco. I use thiem for my Moroccan tea try dance. I have a shamadan with candles as a centre piece on my dining table, I have incense, perfume oils and bits and pieces.

maariku

Dear lord, I can just imagine how a familiar gathering of friends can turn into an orchestra in your living room

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"[A good bellydancer] must express life, death, happiness, sorrow, love and anger, but above all she must have dignity." -Tahia Carioca,