> [!NOTE]+ Meta > Reference:: https://garlandmag.com/welcome-pakistan/ > Date:: 2026-04-39 > Tags:: #warp #Pakistan > [!SUMMARY] Summary > This KHC conversation about craft in Pakistan revealed the important role played by the unique value of hospitality across its culture. This conversation follows a format we use at KHC to explore craft in different parts of the world. We draw on traditions of open, respectful exchange, such as the Oceanic _talanoa_, the Bengali _adda_, the Buddhist _sangha_ and I believe in Pakistan there is something similar unique called *mehfil* as we witness in the joyous qawwali recitals. Each culture has its own way of gathering to share knowledge. --- The KHC Pakistan conversation was held via Zoom on 30 April 2026. Participants joined from Karachi, Islamabad, Adelaide, Stockholm, Abu Dhabi, London, and Portugal, reflecting the breadth of interest in Pakistani craft internationally. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8bC6eXxbSZo?si=ocievFPzNl-ZwM79" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe> The conversation opened with a frame that proved genuinely prophetic. _Mehman nawazi_: Pakistani hospitality as moral obligation rather than social nicety. Noorjehan Bilgrami named it explicitly at the close: "hospitality really is one of our core elements." Imrana Shahryar ended with a direct invitation for all participants to visit Pakistan. What emerged across all three presentations is that hospitality in Pakistani craft is not merely a cultural attitude toward guests — it is embedded in the practice of making itself. **[[Imrana Shahryar]]** described a studio culture built on welcome and reciprocity. Her brand U&I works entirely with leftover industrial yarn, a sustainability practice born of constraint rather than ideology, producing pieces that are by definition unrepeatable. Her weavers are co-designers: they select yarn together, and the weavers' judgment takes precedence over hers. When working with artisan communities in interior Sindh, she enters as a guest — "they are the ones welcoming us into their homes, so we have to be very respectful and listen." Craft knowledge flows both ways, and mutual hospitality is the condition under which good work becomes possible. [[Christina Zetterlund]], who has spent considerable time in Karachi and facilitated this presentation, noted that the apparent simplicity of Imrana's practice conceals deep layers of collaborative intelligence. This is _mehman nawazi_ as methodology. **[[Fattima Naseer]]** located the rupture of Pakistani craft precisely in the breakdown of hospitality between generations. The ustad-shagird (master-apprentice) relationship was a form of welcome: the master opening their knowledge to the student, the student receiving it with reverence. Colonial categorisation of weavers by religion, caste, and location destroyed this intimacy. The carpet, she argued, was itself a form of hospitality: a storytelling medium that welcomed the viewer into the inner life of its maker. When commercial standardisation severed the maker from their object, that welcome disappeared. Her current work, combining archival research, fieldwork among surviving Lahori master weavers, and emerging documentary work, is an attempt to restore it. **[[Noorjehan Bilgrami]]** presented the Pakistan Pavilion she curated for Expo 2025 Osaka, which was perhaps the most literal enactment of hospitality as craft. She worked within severe constraints: 535 square feet, strict weight limits on a man-made island. She designed a healing garden where visitors were invited to pause, breathe therapeutic salt vapours, and be restored. The Japanese audience responded with unusual reverence, sitting and soaking in the space rather than passing through. The pavilion's material, Himalayan pink salt from the Punjab's ancient salt range, was chosen precisely because it crosses all social barriers, present in every kitchen from the humblest home to the grandest. To share salt is one of the oldest gestures of welcome in human culture. The pavilion had previously won a Silver Award among 92 countries at Dubai Expo 2020. Across all three presentations, the conversation revealed hospitality not as Pakistani charm but as a craft epistemology: knowledge is transmitted through relationship, relationship requires welcome, and welcome is a practice that must be continually renewed. The intergenerational thread was evident: Noorjehan taught Imrana's generation; Imrana taught Yusra Tanveer, who appeared in the open discussion as a postgraduate at Central St Martins currently researching Moroccan carpet weaving in parallel with Pakistani traditions. The session itself enacted what it described. A student sat quietly beside Noorjehan, listening. Fattima and Yusra discovered shared research and a potential collaboration. Sahr Bashir, a Pakistani jewellery scholar now based in Adelaide, reconnected with a former student across continents. This is the _mehfil_: a gathering in which knowledge circulates freely among people who receive each other well. **Follow-up opportunities** identified during the session include: Fattima Naseer's forthcoming documentary on carpet weaving in Punjab and Sindh; Yusra Tanveer's Morocco-Pakistan carpet comparison and summer residency; the Hunza carpet centre in Gilgit-Baltistan operated by people with disabilities; and Noorjehan Bilgrami's contribution to the KHC World Dictionary of Craft entry on _Daskari_.