| Except at harvest when all hands are busy in the
fields, a carpet is rising on the loom in every house, and when the sun is
up, at least two women are at work. Most weaving is done by girls and
women between the ages of 14 and 26 who form together into a special community
of work within each neighborhood of the village. They move fluidly
in and out of each other's homes with no need to knock. They come to visit and
when they visit, they sit and weave. Their fathers and husbands are away
in the fields or sitting in the teahouse.
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| A young girl learns gradually in
childhood by sitting beside her mother, her sister, the other women of the
village; she learns by watching and by absorbing what is going on around her.
The master weaver must begin to learn early and build the art into her
process of growth. In this way, she learns the habits of the hand that make the
work easy rather than self-conscious, and thus gains the ability for innovation
and mastery.
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| As young women move through the village,
stopping to visit, weaving while they visit, carpets accumulate the
contributions of a wide circle of friendship. Sitting to weave a spell with her
friend, the visitor might create an intentional inversion in a minor
motif or introduce a spot of surprising color. For the weaver
it is a hatra, or a memento of the time a girlhood friend stopped by and helped for a while. The carpets record the friendships and events of girlhood,
and when the weaver leaves, taking the carpets of her dowry with her to the
village of her husband, they will remind her of these times. |
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