to honour the place. as you are not allowed to go to mecca medina, but through the experience of collecting objects for the last 50 years of my life, ifeel like i'm there anyhow. i virtually feel the soul of the artists have produced these objects through their beliefs. now, an obvious way to share art is through digitisation. but for it to really work and notjust be 2—dimensional, the art needs to live and breathe — every brushstroke of a painting or every thread of a textile. you really need to bring out what's not visible to the naked eye. take this silk, for example, that's used to cover shrines in the holy mosque in mecca, finally embroidered in both silver— and gold—covered wire. the amount of time, effort and intricacy that's gone into many of these works is a matter of spiritual importance. it's not just art for art's sake, but this is produced for a very particular,