Get a feel for the skills that influenced the culture of a nation
Handicrafts and the time-honed skills for making everything from pottery and cooking ware to fabrics and jewellery, are an integral part of Emirati culture, showing an impressive use of natural resources.
Traditional Crafts House reveals the lives of skilled Emirati men and women, demonstrating how over the centuries their work was integral to daily life – providing shelter, clothes, tools, cooking implements, as well as storage for food and medicine.
Return to the time before imports and machine-made goods to see how previous generations responded directly to conditions in the mountains, in the desert, and by the sea. Explore the use of natural products to make by hand what was needed to survive from day to day, and how this evolved into creating intricate clothes and goods for special occasions.
The house also charts the inevitable cultural shifts, such as the decline of the nomadic lifestyle, urbanisation, and competition from machine-made imports.