Last week, the Dallas Museum of Art announced that over the next year it will be taking delivery of containers filled with richly colored carpets and delicate textiles, gleaming lusterware and carved rock-crystal, finely wrought metalwork and folios from illustrated manuscripts, intricately decorated book bindings and splendid calligraphy. The almost 2,000 pieces, created from the eighth through 19th centuries from across the Muslim world, will begin arriving in May from London, where Edmund de Unger (1918-2011) collected and lived with them, treasuring them for their beauty and the knowledge they embodied.

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See also: Dallas Museum of Art Adds Major Collection of Islamic Art