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Best Stories are in details

Museum
French window

The Omani-French Museum stands in old Muscat not far from Bait Muzna and Bait al Zubair. A quirky but charming showcase, it presents to visitors a variety of photographs, objects and information �everything from first-day covers commemorating heroes of the Resistance to the clothes traditionally worn by women in Marseilles, a port city that traded with Muscat. Most of the information boards are translated from French and Arabic into English, so that even those able to read only English can glean details about the history of Franco-Omani relations, a history that began 300 odd years ago and is populated by glamorous figures including a Shah of Persia and Napoleon Bonaparte. The building itself is another draw, an immensely atmospheric construction built by Ghaliah bint Salim, a relative of Sultan Said bin Sultan, which from 1896 until 1920 was occupied by French consuls. The house, named Bait Fransa in honour of this heritage, is nothing short of a delight, an elegant amalgam of dark timber ceilings, balustrades, shutters and doors, white walls and plasterwork, with one particularly evocative room on the first floor furnished like a consul’s office at the turn of the century, equipped with darkwood furniture and interesting sepia photographs.

This charismatic building and unique museum is open Saturday to Wednesday, 8.30am�.30pm, and on Thursday, 9am�pm. Admission costs 500bz. For details, call 24 736613.

Sandy bar
Smoking on the beach

Open since last November, the beach bar at Oman Dive Center is one of the few places in the entire sultanate in which customers can smoke sheesha right on the sand. It’s a nice place, too, round and open on all sides to the sea breezes and views of the bay and surrounding mountains. Draped with crimson curtains and hung with lanterns, the beach bar is a great place to unwind at weekends or in the evenings, for in addition to tables, chairs and stools there are also several low sofas for kicking back and enjoying sheesha with the sand between your toes. Those people with a passion for diving will also appreciate the Dive Center’s other latest attraction: a new dive boat called the Stingray.

The beach bar is open daily, from noon until 11pm. For details, call 24 824240.

Craftwork
Copper shop

The mining of copper has been practised in Oman for millennia �see this month’s feature on Sohar (page 56) for details about a disused copper mine near the ancient port city. Copper is a ductile and easily worked metal, which when alloyed with tin forms bronze, and alloyed with zinc forms brass. Today copper is commonly used for electrical wiring (it is a good conductor of heat and electricity), but it is also available in Muscat fashioned into attractive dishes and bowls. The Omani Heritage Gallery in Jawaharat A’Shatti Complex stocks a range of products made by artisans within the sultanate. Nestled among the goat-hair rugs, pottery incense burners, jewellery and baskets is a collection of bright new copper trays, candle holders, bukhoor boxes, bracelets, ladles and so on, many of them decorated with motifs hammered into, or cut out of, the metal. The shop also sells a small number of sculptural, silver-plated copper bowls, and several traditional kahwa pots with a buttery sheen that have been made from copper but overlaid with silver and brass. All of these copper products are made in Nizwa. Prices vary according to weight and intricacy of design; the large dish or tray shown here (top left) costs RO19.500; a bowl with a lid is around RO19.800; and bowls without lids are RO12.500.
Omani Heritage Gallery is open Saturday to Thursday, 10am�pm. For details, call 24696974.

DIY
Painting for pleasure

Last month witnessed the opening of Café Céramique, a delightful café-cum-studio in Al Araimi Complex in Qurm that allows its customers to paint biscuit pottery while also enjoying things to eat and drink. The menu is pretty extensive, ranging from coffees and juices to an all-day breakfast, bagels, soups, salads, sandwiches and the so-called Chef’s Specialities, but it’s the paints and brushes that make this café unique. Visitors can choose a piece of unglazed pottery �there’s a wide selection, everything from plates and platters to jam pots and mobile phone holders �and then sit and paint it. In addition to conventional, water-based ceramics paints, Café Céramique offers ‘puffy�paints that create an embossed effect. Decorated pieces are then glazed and fired in the in-house kiln for 36 hours at over 500°C, after which they are microwave and dishwasher safe. The ceramics are then ready to be collected and taken home. Café Céramique opened six years ago in the UAE and today has additional branches in Doha, Riyadh and now Muscat. Armand Ursua, event and marketing coordinator, adds that the company aims eventually to go all over the region, opening in Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. Certainly the Muscat branch is brimming with crowd-pleasing ideas to lure customers through the doors. Among the events on offer are children’s parties, workshops for adults and children, and corporate activities. Café Céramique is open daily, 9am�1pm. Paints, glazing and firing are included in the price of individual pieces of biscuit pottery, which vary according to size �a small plate costs around RO5.500. For details, call 24 566617.

Address book
Pearl source

Until the 1930s, when the Japanese discovered a way to produce pearls artificially, Bahrain had a thriving pearl industry, and the sultanate had its fair share of pearl-fishing boats, too. The heyday of natural pearl fishing is over but happily it is still possible to buy pearls (albeit cultured ones) in that most atmospheric centre of commerce, Mutrah souq. Many of the shops are heaving with lustrous beads, so much so that it’s hard to know where to start. One shop near the gold souq has a particularly fine selection. Shatti al Khaleej Trading has been around since 1989 and sells a variety of freshwater cultured pearls sourced from China. In addition to lustrous white examples are those that are pink and inky grey, as well as mother-of-pearl beads dyed bronze, green and blue, some of which are strung together with Omani silver beads (expect to pay around RO16 per necklace). The pearls come in different shapes, too: in addition to perfectly spherical specimens (the most expensive and desirable, and RO12 per strand) are those shaped like small coins, thin twigs or melon seeds. Owner Kishor J Gohil will happily make up necklaces for clients, and he also sells ready-made 1920s-style strands long enough to loop three times round the neck. Strands of smaller pearls start from around RO3 each. For details, call Shatti al Khaleej Trading on 24 715076. To reach the shop, follow the souq’s main artery right up until it branches in two. Go right, then at the next fork bear left, into the gold souq. Shatti al Khaleej Trading is on the right.

Spotted
Global ambition

Daisuke Nakanishi and Martin Graham (below, left and right respectively) made a pitstop last month en route to Dubai at Bait Nu’man (see page 46). The men are cycling independently round the world but joined forces when they met in Addis Ababa. They’ll split in Dubai, Martin heading for Africa while Daisuke, who has been on the road for ten years, makes for Iran. To date he has visited 108 countries, averaging 100km per day but still finding time to take in sights along the way.