for the love of embroidery
A special vintage piece of embroidery landed in my studio after a lengthy journey.
From its smell and touch I could swear I knew where it was born.
It must have started in the hands of secret underground embroiders. The story goes that on one Saturday afternoon in October, colored silk thread and linen showed up in a modest alley that separates embroiderers’ domiciles in a remote village. That first visit was completed in total secrecy. Husbands were away and no one noticed this suspicious business rendezvous, the first in a series. Those conspiring future workers lined up to receive the “material”; they were nervous like a woman would receive her furtive lover. They had been promised to receive requests and supplementary material on the first Saturday of each month in case their work was approved.
A yellow SUV delivered a big burlap bag with the thread and fabric and audio taped instructions describing the stitches. Before this visit, on normal afternoons, the middle-aged ordinary housewives would gather after a long day of tedious housework on each other’s terrasses, dressed in their afternoon colorful robes to share stories and harmless gossip over coffee and tea. Little did they know that this routine was about to change. From that day and on, their gatherings took place in the same place, but for a different purpose: to furtively and patiently embroider while updating each other on the latest episodes of some Egyptian or Turkish series. They executed their work with suffocated enchantment. Soon enough some started wearing reading glasses, while others concocted new blends of nameless herbal teas mostly grown on their balconies; some created alternatives for ottomans where to rest their tired feet while crossing those fine and precise colored stitches. They rotated those secret gatherings in each others’ dwellings, making sure to reveal their work to no one, except for the safe village minors. Very soon the invisible “dealer” applauded their work and started sending requests and materials twice a month: more silk and thread and cotton and instructions on tapes were regularly welcome. They learned that their magical work made it to dresses and shawls. They were sent a few photos by young relatives living abroad of their work exhibited in exotic shows, and in the “textile museums” in very modern cities. Photos of women working on those projects on their modest terraces in colorful dresses and slippers were made into small icons and tagged on the back of the items’ linings, some hidden statement that claimed to empower underpaid women in some exotic fashion?
So it happens that on one Saturday afternoon, to my own enchantment and amusement, I received a large bag of fabric scraps from a friend of mine who was in a mission from her therapist to unclutter her own studio: she had collected leftover materials from the closets of her deceased mother-in-law: beads, buttons, trimmings, tassels, fabric and lace. She knew I could make use of these charming ornaments to complement my patchwork projects. As soon as I opened the bag, a piece of an old cushion revealed itself and stood out in a statement. I could swear it smiled at me. It was pretty torn, and its corners were worn own from spending long years in her mother-in-law’s noble salon. It occurred to me that I had seen similar cushions in many living rooms at different “ageing” stages. I gently held that piece in my hand. My favorite turquoise dominated the composition. Such cushions resonate of intensive labor: repetitive recursive iterations, row after row, some more monotonous than others. I observed the embroidery’s patterns and heard the encrypted melody of some afternoon uniform existence. A calming thoughtless mantra of stitches and women assembling in solidarity sealed a long day’s hard work.
Such embroidered cushions formed an ideal wedding gift specially if the newlyweds were moving abroad… I took that fragment carefully into my hands, with the care of a doctor treating the wounds of a loved one. I planned to harmlessly trim away the exhausted corners without altering its character. As soon as my finest scissors laid their blades on its surface in order to perform the gentle incision, a cloud of letter-like dust started hovering in my studio. I smiled to the fragrance of herbal teas emanating from the ripped stitches; I heard the snitchers’ laughter; if I concentrated, I would get a glimpse of that yellow SUV as it rolled its wheels into the alley; I could smell the jasmine on the terrace. I held my breath long enough to witness the seasons rolling into those lengthy days on the terrace. Then in the winter parlors of those beautiful, secretly joyful embroiderers; not to mention the scent of onions in their hair, mixed with the “Baladi” soap… All those and more sparkled across my studio, like cheerful glittery material whispering a tale once told and never lived. I followed the dust with the corner of my eyes with the watchfulness of a butterfly collector attempting to preserve the last remains of a fluttered wing belonging to some discontinued butterfly species of the Amazon.
