Al Sadu in Contemporary Design

A craft survives when people want what it makes. For most of its history Sadu was wanted because the Bedouin needed tents, cushions and saddle bags. Today it is wanted because designers, galleries and hotels have found in it something no factory can supply: a pattern with a history.

Aljoud Lootah’s AlSadu

The Emirati designer Aljoud Lootah launched her AlSadu collection in November 2015 — rugs, cushions and pieces for the tent and the majlis that reinterpret the traditional weave, with names such as Uwairyan taken from the patterns themselves. She has said that seeing Al Sadu placed on UNESCO’s urgent list made her realise the role she could play as a designer.

Reviving Al Sadu, Dubai Design Week

At Dubai Design Week in 2024, the Emirati artist Sarah Al Mansoori showed Reviving Al Sadu: an installation that set Sadu weaving in locally sourced wool beside 3D-printed elements made from recycled materials and wood engraved with traditional patterns. Supported by the Mubadala Excellence Program, it asked how heritage and new technology might be made together rather than against each other.

Al Ghadeer and the weavers themselves

Al Ghadeer UAE Crafts has paired its weavers with designers for years. Its Tirhal collection, designed by Loreta Bilinskaite-Monie, was made by sixteen Bedouin women from its programme. At Dubai Design Week in 2018 its craftswomen ran public workshops, teaching Sadu as they had been taught by those before them.

A craft survives when people want what it makes.

Craft and inspiration

There is a distinction worth keeping clear. Al Sadu, as UNESCO recognises it, is a skill: the spinning, dyeing and hand-weaving held by master weavers. Much contemporary work is Sadu-inspired — it borrows the patterns, the colours or the structure, and is made by other means. Both have a place. Inspired design keeps the patterns in front of new eyes and can send attention and income back to the source; the craft itself lives only as long as there are hands that can do it.

We think about this carefully at FARWA, and we are plain about which side of the line we stand on. The band on our Heritage pieces is machine-woven in Sadu’s patterns and colours, and each coat is finished by hand in the UAE: Sadu-inspired, not hand-woven Sadu. We tell the story of Al Sadu so that anyone who wears the pattern knows where it comes from — and who kept the craft alive.