Artist Sofia Niazi reflects on how making new artworks in response to Birmingham’s Pre-Raphaelites and Arts and Crafts collection has opened the door to dying crafts and devotional art.

Earlier this year, along with a group of artists from across Birmingham, I was invited by True Form Projects to take part in some sessions at Birmingham Museums exploring works from the city’s Pre-Raphaelites and Arts and Crafts collection. Over several sessions, we were introduced to a wide variety of works ranging from stained glass panels and embellished textiles to richly illustrated publications. The sessions gave an insight into the working practices of some of the artists, designers and craftspeople of the Arts and Crafts movement and made clear some of the concerns and challenges they were grappling with during a period of rapid industrialisation. Following the sessions, the artists involved were invited to submit proposals for new works that responded in some way to the collections.

I had begun to take an interest in the Arts and Crafts movement about five years ago for a range of reasons. I was based at Birmingham School of Art, where I was a fellow, and was curious about the beautiful building I had found myself nestled in. Many members of the Arts and Crafts movement studied or taught at Birmingham School of Art. The curriculum was heavily influenced by the ideas, ethos, and approach of the likes of William Morris, John Ruskin and Edward Burnes-Jones, who placed an emphasis on the importance of the autonomy of the worker/craftsperson, greatly valued traditional craft and skill and had a shared disdain for mass production and what they considered the degradation of the worker under its factory conditions.

After 10 years of practising as an artist and working across 3 studios, my move to Birmingham School of Art marked the beginning of my establishing a real studio practice, working across painting, ceramics (supported by Modern Clay) and rug making. For the 10 years prior, what little studio time I got was split between writing emails and having meetings. Whilst some art got made, it mainly happened in my room or the local cafe. As such, I have always been intrigued by workshops and studios where a lot of art gets made and the economic, social, and cultural conditions that allow and obstruct this production. Speaking to peers, so much of our time and attention today is spent trying to create the conditions for the work: writing applications, travelling, contextualising the work. It makes actual art making something that we aspire towards but often struggle to catch up to or spend much time with.

When researching for the proposal, something that stood out to me, in terms of connections to my own practice, was the central place of devotion, faith and God in the work and beliefs of some of the artists of the movement. Ruskin talked about the higher place of art being to ‘raise and assist the mind in the reception of nobler ideas, the mysteries of God’. I had recently attended an Art of Hajj lecture at The Museum of Islamic Arts & Heritage(MIAH) Foundation, where curator Qaisra Khan had been invited to deliver a talk. She carefully took us through a presentation featuring many beautiful, handcrafted objects that had passed through the pilgrim route. The objects she presented varied greatly in terms of material, craft, and usage: some were related to performing the hajj pilgrimage but there were also decorative objects from all over the world that were traded in Mecca. Although Mecca is a religious city, home to the Kaaba, whose direction Muslims pray towards, it has always been a site of trade, even during the time of the prophet Muhammad PBUH.

When I visited Mecca for pilgrimage a long time ago, I bought several things, most of which were cheaply produced and made of plastic.

The little slide show viewer was still sort of magical though, maybe even more so than some of the olden day objects, but I thought, for this proposal, wouldn’t it be interesting to consider what craft objects could be made and traded in Mecca today if economic viability was not a concern? I wanted to make objects that had a religious and practical dimension, that were made using craft process and natural materials. I knew I needed to abandon ideas of economies of scale to achieve this and with the help of an artist fee I entered a dream zone where I could do just that. Working slowly across different workshops in Birmingham, a range of objects, including a workshop sign, were born. I hope the objects will invite people to consider value systems and production modes outside of our prevailing extractive economic system and consider how a workshop which seeks to re-establish art as a vessel for poetry, contemplation, transmission, and devotion might come about.

Artist Sofia Niazi has made a group of pieces in glass, textiles and on paper in response to Birmingham’s Arts and Crafts collection, as a commission through the Post-Raphaelites project funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council through the University of Birmingham, and through Arts Council.

Post-Raphaelites was an 18-month project which brought together six Birmingham-based artists to engage with the city’s collections of 19th-century art and design. The group met in a series of discussion workshops and store visits and each artist developed an initial creative response to the historical collections. Sofia’s proposal was selected to be worked up into a full-scale commission.

Sofia’s stained-glass workshop sign is on display in Made at MAC: Working with Metal at Midland Arts Centre from 8 March-18 May 2025.

See more of Sofia’s work here: https://www.sofianiazi.co.uk/