I just returned from a brief trip to Berkeley to celebrate the opening of a museum exhibition on Moroccan Jewish art that I helped research:...

From My Files, week 3! This week we're going back in time to find the earliest record of henna... Where and when did it begin — India? A...

From My Files, week 2! Let's keep the momentum going. Building off of last week's post , which featured a genipa fruit in a 17th c...

The question of henna use in China has come up many times in my research, and I finally decided to address it... My obvious hesitation is t...

Why does the dove always have henna on her feet? Because when Noah sent forth a raven and a dove from the Ark, the raven never came back. T...

One year ago, I wrote a blog post exploring an Indian Mughal painting from Rajasthan, ca. 1740, showing a woman with a simple dot design o...

I’ve already blogged about henna in East Africa here , and of course I’ve done several posts about henna in North Africa (e.g. here , here ...

At a recent academic conference, I heard a paper presented by Professor Deborah Starr, from Cornell University, about the films of Egyptian...

I had a lovely private appointment a while back whose client wanted some henna for her upcoming trip to East Africa, including Kenya and Ta...

Hi henna blog readers! I know it’s been a while — the beginning of my PhD program has meant that I’ve been even more busy than usual… I’m su...

In our last blogpost , we explored the possible evidence for hennaed drumheads in medieval Spain. In the end, while there are many images of...

I have a friend who is a musicologist specializing in Sephardic music, and for months we have been trying to arrange for me to henna some of...

This past weekend marked the 2-year anniversary of this blog! It’s hard to believe that I’ve been blogging about henna for 2 years. In honou...

Apologies for the long break with no posts! The end of the semester and the deadline for my thesis, combined with my move, ate up every spar...

I’ve been swamped with thesis research and planning my upcoming move (!) so I apologize if posts have not been coming as regularly. My thesi...

The things I do for you, dear readers! This blogpost almost got me thrown out of a museum… But such is the life of a henna researcher. ...

I got a wonderful question on my Tumblr a few days ago and I thought I’d feature the answer here too.  “Hi!! Do you have any record of Cr...

Happy Nowruz! This weekend marks the spring equinox, March 21, marked by many communities across Central and South Asia as Nowruz ( نوروز‎ ...

I am super excited to be co-presenting at a weekend conference in NYC, Feb. 28-Mar. 1, devoted to Moroccan henna (and tickets are still ...

A friend of mine asked me the other day if there were henna traditions in Europe... Of course! In this post I thought I'd feature one su...