“There’s a humanity there.”

June 1, 2021 5:24 PM

Wafa Ghnaim Uses the Traditional Craft of Tatreez to Preserve and Share Palestinian History [SL Vogue].

There’s a photograph of Wafa Ghnaim, as a a toddler, helping pull the excess canvas from her mother’s embroidery project. In the photo, which was taken in Massachusetts, she’s the same age that her mother, Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim, was in 1948, when a radio broadcast told her family to leave their home in the mountain village of Safad, near the Sea of Galilee, for a few days. Thinking they’d be back, Ghnaim’s grandparents left behind their nicest clothes, including dresses intricately embroidered with tatreez, traditional Palestinian cross-stitch. When it became clear that they wouldn’t be returning home anytime soon, Abbasi-Ghnaim’s mother and grandmother began teaching her the techniques, and the stories, behind each of the embroidery patterns. In turn, Abbasi-Ghnaim passed the tradition down to her three daughters.

Today, Ghnaim has carried the tradition even further—passing her knowledge of tatreez down to thousands of students across North America. The author of Tatreez & Tea: Embroidery and Storytelling in the Palestinian Diaspora, an oral history of her family and the tatreez patterns her mother passed down, Ghnaim currently teaches workshops at the Smithsonian Museum and serves as an artist in residence at the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington, D.C. She’s also hard at work on her second book, documenting tatreez patterns in the collections of major museums and private collections. For her, teaching tatreez is a way to preserve her family’s culture and humanize the Palestinian experience.

posted by Ahmad Khani (10 comments total)

Thanks for posting this!
posted by janell at 6:36 PM on June 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

Tatreez & Tea also asserts that diaspora embroidery carries a meaning and history of its own, and that the dominant framework for understanding Palestinian embroidery motifs through its village origination is not sufficient in understanding the embroidery traditions carried on by Palestinian artists for the last century.

Makes sense.

I wish they spoke more about how it was done. Are the cloths pre-stamped? Or do they stencil the pattern on, like sashiko? Or is it free-hand (challenging with so many geometric patterns)?
posted by praemunire at 6:55 PM on June 1, 2021 [2 favorites]

There's a lot more information about the process on the Trateez and Tea website. I need to resist getting sucked in too far, because I just can't add another craft to my hobby pile!
posted by See you tomorrow, saguaro at 9:04 PM on June 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

praemunire, the picture of Ghnaim as a child shows her pulling "waste canvas" out of finished embroidery. Waste canvas is woven in a fine even grid but not twisted together. Waste canvas goes over the clothing material, you embroider over the canvas so your stitches are all the same size, then you pull the canvas out thread by thread leaving a dense flexible regular embroidery. Much easier on the eyes than, say, counting white threads for Tudor black work.
posted by clew at 10:33 AM on June 2, 2021 [3 favorites]

… and there’s a small introductory booklet on the website as well as the big book. Oo.
posted by clew at 11:09 AM on June 2, 2021

i love this! can't wait to browse and pick up some new techniques!
posted by cendawanita at 11:55 AM on June 2, 2021

Thanks so much, clew!
posted by praemunire at 12:04 PM on June 2, 2021

Love this. I see this kind of tradition and just marvel at the achievements of humanity.
posted by latkes at 12:07 PM on June 2, 2021

There’s a better picture of waste canvas most of the way through the Vogue article - red embroidery over white canvas on black material. The canvas has every ?fifth? horizontal a different color, which would help with counted patterns.
posted by clew at 1:00 PM on June 2, 2021

Linked from the article is a 2019 profile of designer Suzy Tamimi and an awesome photo of Rashida Tlaib rocking a Palestinian thobe in Congress. Tamimi took classes from Ghnaim.
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:49 PM on June 2, 2021 [1 favorite]