Textile Designer Madeline Weinrib Celebrates the Met’s Islamic Wing With a Joyful New Initiative

During the spring of 2020, renowned textile designer Madeline Weinrib was in lockdown, sheltering in her Long Island beach house while the COVID epidemic raged, and wondering what she could do to help. For 20 years, while running her eponymous fabric and home furnishings business, she had worked with artisans in India, Morocco, Turkey, and elsewhere, creating designs that infused age-old craftsmanship with a modern sensibility.

At the time El Fenn, the boutique hotel she co-owns in Marrakesh, was shuttered, and AlNour, the non-profit cooperative for Moroccan women with a range of disabilities, which furnishes the hotel’s exquisite embroidered linens, was languishing. Weinrib knew that many of her other collaborators, artisans from around the world, were out of work.

She’d been speaking with Stephen Mannello, the head of retail at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s gift shop, when suddenly a light bulb went off. The tenth anniversary of the Met’s reimagined Islamic Wing was fast approaching.“The Met suggested we do something for the shop in honor of the anniversary–so I took that idea and ran with it,” Weinrib says. “Everyone then was dealing with challenges. We didn’t know if we’d be able to get products in from India, for example, which was particularly hard-hit. But knowing what was going on globally, I wanted to invite a lot of artisans and designers to participate.”

The result–now timed to celebrate the Islamic Wing’s eleventh anniversary–is The Heirloom Project, a capsule collection of handmade accessories, fine jewelry, and housewares curated by Weinrib, who also acted as the collection’s creative director. Each item was inspired by a specific work in the Met’s Islamic Wing; all are available exclusively through the Met Store, with select items available online. (Weinrib will be appearing at the Met Store on April 22 and 23 from 5-8 p.m. for a trunk show, alongside a presentation of antique Indian jewelry by the Mahnaz Collection.)

From Morocco, there are AlNour’s delicately embroidered table linens and striped, tassled towels by Made in Tangiers, the latter “perfect to drape over lounge chairs in the summer,” Weinrib says. From India, there are handwoven and embroidered scarves by Kashmir Loom and a caftan in the finest merino wool, “ideal,” she explains, “for holiday entertaining.” Evening purses created by Syrian refugees working in Jordan with traditional wood marquetry and inlay techniques (under the auspices of the non-profit Turquoise Mountain) are uncannily elegant. “Participating in a celebration of the Met’s Islamic Wing was a tremendous source of pride for all these artisans,” Weinrib says.