Sewing Circle Project Meeting
SubjectPortrait of
Florence Betgeorge
(Assyrian)
Date2008-2009
Mediumborn digital photography
ClassificationsGraphics
Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections
CopyrightIn Copyright
Object number2015.196.441.23-.24
DescriptionPhotographs of Sewing Circle participants at Hartford Public Library. Florence Betgeorge is teaching crochet to Burmese Karen participants.
NotesSubject Note: The Sewing Circle Project began in 2007 as an initiative to encourage production, marketing, and sustainability of traditional crafts among the many immigrant and refugee communities in the Greater Hartford area and across the state. Developed by the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program (CCHAP) based at the Institute for Community Research (ICR) in Hartford and at the Connecticut Historical Society after 2015, the project supported the remarkable traditional arts of these newcomers. Members of the Sewing Circle met regularly at ICR and also at the Hartford Public Library to work on their art forms, learn new skills, and share coffee and conversation. This cooperative environment fostered social interaction among the artists and public audiences, respected and encouraged their cultural heritage and artistic traditions, stimulated literacy improvement, and helped to develop marketplaces for their artwork. CCHAP organized gatherings, exhibits, workshops, marketplace events, promotional materials, and educational activities for the group’s participants. While most of the artists experienced war, trauma, and dislocation, they continue to practice their cultural heritage and artistic traditions, blending these with current experiences and materials to create artwork that is both beautiful and functional. Even when immigrants and refugees embrace a move that takes them to a more stable and prosperous place, resettlement poses challenges of physical and psychological adaptation. Many new Americans have eased transition by continuing, recreating, or reinventing familiar art forms. For many members of refugee communities now living in New England, practicing their familiar arts of weaving, knitting, basket making, lace making, music, dance, and storytelling helps them to cope with the trauma of the genocide and displacement their families have suffered. Subject Note: The Karen are a group of tribal people living in the hills of northern Burma and northern Thailand. Forced out of Burma by repressive military governments since 1975, Karen refugees relocated to camps in Thailand. Over 200 Karen have settled in Hartford in recent years, bringing with them excellent musical and textile skills. Many Karen can weave their own cloth, making traditional shirts, sarongs, and shoulder bags. Although the preferred materials for looms and cloth can be difficult to find, family members build looms for the weavers using PVC pipes instead of bamboo. Mu Wah learned all the techniques of weaving from her mother starting at the age of ten. She and weaver Hser Nay Paw came to Hartford in 2007, joining the Sewing Circle Project as a way to continue their cultural heritage. Myint Khin arrived in Connecticut in early September 2013, to reunite with her family. She learned to weave from teachers in the Thailand camp, and has now taught her four daughters.
Karen women and men weave their fine cotton cloth on backstrap looms that can be rolled up and transported from place to place. First the threads are stretched out in a continuous loop around an upright frame with wooden or bamboo posts that hold the yarn tight. Then this set of threads still on the posts is lifted off the frame and turned horizontally to form the warp that is now stretched out as the basis of the cloth. The weaver ties one of the posts to a stationary object such as a tree, with the other post in front of her and tied at either end to a strap around her back. Leaning back to create tension on the warp threads, she can weave back and forth between the threads to create cloth. Intricate patterns with dyed threads are woven into the base cloth, and weavers will sometimes embellish the cloth with embroidery and beads made of seeds. Specific patterns can tell stories or reflect inspirations and knowledge from nature, in a kind of visual narrative. Different colors and stripe patterns can denote marital status or occupations of the person wearing the cloth.
Hartford is now home to several Karen weavers – Hser Nay Paw, Mu Wah, Nu Wah, Pwe Say Paw, and Myint Khin are some of the Burmese Karen weavers who use traditional backstrap looms to make the clothing worn by all members of their large community in Hartford. Their woven cloth, bags, shirts, and scarves have been exhibited by CCHAP in several exhibits including Weaving a New Life: The Refugee Artists Sewing Circle at the Clare Gallery in Hartford in 2009, and in the 2013-2015 traveling exhibit New Lives New England, displayed at the Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury VT, and the Institute for Community Research in Hartford. Myint Khin and Mu Wah traveled with CCHAP to demonstrate weaving at the Vermont Folklife Center in December 2013.
Mu Wah learned all the techniques of weaving from her mother starting at the age of ten. She and weaver Hser Nay Paw came to Hartford in 2007, joining the Sewing Circle Project as a way to continue their cultural traditions. Myint Khin is a Burmese Karen master weaver who arrived in early September 2013 to live with family members already settled in Hartford. She learned to weave from teachers in the Thailand refugee camp, and has now taught her daughters. She has presented programs in Greater Hartford schools, with students from Miss Porters School, and at Trinity College to show students her back strap weaving and the clothes she makes. Myint was a popular weaver in the refugee camp in Thailand where her four daughters were born, three of them are also weavers. Myint is in demand as a weaver and seamstress for the Burmese Karen community in Connecticut and New England.
Biographical Note: Florence Betgeorge was born in northern Iran in the Azerbaijan Province, a traditionally Assyrian Christian area. Assyrians speak a language similar to ancient Aramaic, and trace descent from the Babylonians of Mesopotamia. Florence attended Catholic school in Iran, also learning textile arts from the French nuns who ran the school. After her marriage and a move to Tehran, diplomats and other wealthy patrons commissioned baby clothes, bedcovers, and trousseaux from her. Persecution of Assyrians intensified in Iran after the fall of the Shah and during the Islamic Revolution from 1978-1982, and Florence and her family immigrated to the US in 1984. They settled in New Britain, CT where Assyrians have established a strong community with a church and a cultural center. Florence creates exquisite embroidery, lace, decorative home textiles, and she can tailor any garment. Sharokin Betgevargiz, Florence’s daughter, learned lace-making with her mother as part of the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program in 2007-2008 and continues to create lace earrings, necklaces, and table covers, sometimes using unusual threads made of metal. Florence has participated in many activities of CCHAP’s Sewing Circle Project from 2007. CCHAP has displayed her work in several exhibitions. One of her knotted lace pieces is in the collection of the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History, 2015.217.0, and a hand-picked handkerchief, 2015.232.0.
Florence makes lace using only a needle and 2 or 3 ply fine cotton thread, in a French style she learned from nuns. This style creates knots that secure the delicate thread as the lace strands are built up, whereas in crochet lace the stitches are continuous and unravel if pulled. She describes her lace technique as “needlework” or dentelle in French. Her special addition to this technique creates writing in lace, with scripts in Aramaic.
Additional audio, video, and photographic materials exist in the archive relating to these communities and artists.
Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.
Status
Not on view
Fatima Vejzovic
2009 January-February
