This Eid al-Fitr, a former warehouse in Stafford was transformed into a place of worship with the installation of The Stafford Mihrab: a hand-stitched fabric artwork commissioned for the Stafford Muslim Community Centre’s new mosque, unveiled just in time for Eid 2026.

The project is the culmination of Interlaced: Islamic Art in British Life, an 18-month initiative conceived and led by Nadia El-Sebai — Executive Director of The Arab British Centre and a member of Stafford’s Muslim community — volunteering for the SMCC. Supported by the Barakat Trust’s Hands-on Islamic Art Grant and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the project set out to engage the Stafford community with Islamic art and design, and to create something lasting for their new mosque.

Shahed Saleem. Photo (C) Ethan Johnson

Throughout 2025, residents took part in workshops with artist Shahed Saleem, artist and engineer Mohammed Younes, and historian Dr Richard McClary, held in partnership with the V&A Wedgwood Collection and the Staffordshire History Centre. The workshops explored Islamic ceramic collections and Staffordshire’s own pottery heritage.

Workshop (C) Ethan Johnson

As Nadia El-Sebai reflects: “What struck many of us was learning that the relationship between Islamic art and our local Staffordshire design heritage runs in both directions. That exchange became part of the design process — and created something rooted in Stafford, but part of a bigger picture.”

Workshop Drawing Islamic Tile Patterns / Workshop Process (C) Ethan Johnson

The creative outputs from those workshops — drawings, patterns and motifs contributed by participants aged two to eighty — formed a community design library that artists Shahed Saleem and Mohammed Younes translated into the final commission. To realise it, the team turned to Khayamiya: an Egyptian appliqué craft in which intricate geometric and arabesque patterns are stitched onto fabric, historically used to create ceremonial and processional tents, still practised today in Cairo’s Street of the Tentmakers.

Wedding of Aziz al-Bindary and Naila Ibrahim, 1960. Courtesy of El-Rashidi & Bowker.

The choice was both practical and resonant. The SMCC’s new mosque is being built in phases, and the community needed something that could make their space feel complete before the building was finished. As Shahed Saleem explains: “Khayamiya gave us a way to resolve the challenge of working in a community space that will be evolving over the next few years. The tentmakers of Cairo have been transforming spaces in transition with fabric and pattern for centuries. The Stafford Mihrab continues that tradition.”

Making the Mihrab: The workshop of Atef Kamal, Cairo. Image (C) Atef Kamal Workshop

The finished piece is modular — designed to be adapted and expanded as the mosque develops — and was hand-stitched in Cairo at the workshop of Atef Kamal in the street of the tentmakers. Installed in the former warehouse, the fabric mihrab now orients the congregation towards the direction of prayer, transforming an unfinished space into somewhere that feels ready for worship.

Install (C) Ethan Johnson

Seif El-Rashidi, Director of the Barakat Trust, describes the project as exactly the kind of work the Hands-on Islamic Art scheme exists to support: “The Stafford community, in all its diversity, came together to make something collaborative, creative, and purposeful — inspired by tilework and ceramics from the Islamic world, paying homage to the long and lasting influence these traditions have had on Staffordshire pottery production.”

Shahed Saleem, Nadia El-Sebai, Seif El-Rashidi (C) Ethan Johnson

The Stafford Mihrab: A Design Dialogue is currently on display at the V&A Wedgwood Collection, Barlaston, Stoke-on-Trent until June 2026. A panel discussion with Nadia El-Sebai, Seif El-Rashidi, and Shahed Saleem takes place on 26 March at the V&A Wedgwood Collection, free to attend.

Details of the panel discussion can be found in the links below.

https://www.arabbritishcentre.org.uk/whatson/talk-the-stafford-mihrab-a-design-dialogue

https://www.worldofwedgwood.com/content/special-event-stafford-mihrab

To support the SMCC’s mosque construction fundraiser, visit: gofundme.com/f/support-stafford-islamic-center-build-a-stronger-community