14 Facts About Sheila Paine

Sheila Paine was an English expert on Islamic embroidery.

Sheila Paine was known for her travel books including The Afghan Amulet, describing her efforts to find the "linen goddess", an embroidered motif found from Greece to central Asia, and the origins of an elaborately embroidered "Kohistan" dress she had seen in a dealer's shop in London.

Sheila Paine's work was exhibited at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.

Sheila Paine was born on 29 September 1929 in Balham to Barbara Sykes and the quantity surveyor Edgar Thorpe.

Sheila Paine did a foundation course at Hammersmith College of Art.

Sheila Paine then broke off her education, travelling to South Africa to work as a translator and meeting a mining engineer, Leslie Paine.

Sheila Paine resumed her education at Oxford Polytechnic, eventually becoming a teacher of modern languages there.

Sheila Paine began to collect English samplers, her first venture into the study of textiles.

Leslie Paine was killed on Turkish Airlines Flight 981 when it crashed near Paris in 1974.

Sheila Paine habitually travelled with 5 kilograms of baggage and a bottle of vodka; to save weight, she went so far as to cut the handles of her toothbrushes in half.

Sheila Paine returned from each trip with carefully-labelled pieces of Islamic and other embroidery.

Sheila Paine curated her collections meticulously, recording where she had acquired each item, and analysing how it was made.

An exhibition of her photographs of her textile journeys, Embroidered Visions: Photographs of Central Asia and the Middle East by Sheila Paine, was held at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, from November 2016 to April 2017.

Sheila Paine stopped travelling at the age of 80, when she fractured her back.