You wouldn’t realise you’re in for an extraordinary experience for the first part of the trip, travelling on a smooth highway out of Bulgaria’s capital city, Sofia. It is the second part that lands you on a bumpy road into the mountainous countryside that feels like time travel.
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The car shook with every hole that I failed to avert, lost in my daydream. I was headed to a village in search of lace so elegant, a fine piece of art in utter contrast with the rough environment that had been its safe haven. At once, as if my real and imagined worlds intertwined, the road cleared up. The sun was bright and high above the mountain peaks ahead, shining on a smooth pathway as if laid out a minute earlier just for me. I was hopeful, yet a bit anxious, as I had chosen to take this trip alone.
My study of Bulgarian lace work had started in the grand halls of the library of the National Ethnographic Museum, which deserves its own story. But what I had found out in those great dusty books written in old Bulgarian language was the unique design of Bulgarian keneta – delicate lace made with a sewing needle, intended to decorate the edges of women’s head shawls, necklines and sleeves.
Unlike other lacework that is unicolor, usually in white, off-white or black, the Bulgarian keneta would be stitched in multiple colours to lighten up the usually monochrome dresswear of the time. Its diverse designs would follow the richness of earthly life. Starting from basic geometric shapes, moving through floral motives such as violets, snowdrops, and edelweiss, keneta lace would reach true artwork precision in its images of animals (dogs, chicks, butterflies) and even men and women holding hands dancing.
Due to the relatively isolated life back in the days of animal-powered transportation, keneta lace designs would unfold and evolve in very distinct, equally astonishing directions in each secluded village, following the creative worlds of artisans’ imaginations who would interact mostly with their neighbors.
I arrive at one of these special, secluded breaks in time. A village with a population of about a thousand a long time ago, Sestrimo now boasts the beauty of the advancing nature overtaking many of the once full of life, now desolate stone houses. Its young inhabitants have in recent years been lured to the nearby cities, while only a few of the elderly have escaped the grip of old age, rough conditions in a mountainous area, and, most recently, an unforgiving local wave of the pandemic. I stop the car as I see an old lady with her maybe three-year-old grandson. Sestrimo is one of the places mentioned multiple times in the dusty old books as the cradle of Bulgarian keneta. I must find the artisans and their archived treasures. This unique craft needs to be brought back to life.
In such a place people help each other and a stranger you stop and ask wouldn’t suspiciously stare back at a you, as when you are in a big city, but would rather respond with genuine curiosity and willingness to offer the warmest hospitality. I would learn later that outsiders hardly ever visit. I talked to the lady with the grandson. She wasn’t a keneta artisan herself and didn’t know of one but knew who could help me. I was advised to walk up to the only village store where, of course, the shopkeeper would know everyone and point me in the right direction. And so she did.
By the time I reached the new destination, the only apartment building in the village, the artisan was expecting me. The news of my arrival had already reached this lady famous in the village for her needlework. She welcomed me home, had me drink a cup of tea and showed me pictures of her grandchildren and all the crochet dresses and skirts she had made for them. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the keneta lace I was looking for. She didn’t know much about it and shared that the keneta masters that they had in Sestrimo were all gone. Some keneta samples were at display in the mayor’s office, but it was closed now. I started reconsidering how to make the best of my time, so I asked her what knitting was for her and if she had any designs that she felt especially strongly about. She was so proud of the clothes she had knitted for her grandchildren.
“Through my work, they will remember me,” she said.
Unfortunately for her, that creative side of her life was gone, as she had recently had an eye operation and she couldn’t knit any more. A heavy toll, but a frequent one for women of her age.
Moved by our meeting and coming to terms with the fact keneta masters would be gone, but perhaps some of their work would still be in the homes they left behind, I followed the lady’s directions to visit another of her fellow villagers, a master of crochet. For the following time, I was heartily welcomed and sat at a modest, but cozy table in the garden.
Tzvetanka is a sixty-something woman who is in complete harmony with her world. She takes care of her kitchen garden, her livestock, and her mischievous Jack Russell Terrier. All of the food is home-grown, home-cooked, and serves a large family of three generations who live together. I would meet all of them.
“We only buy flour and sugar from the city nearby. Oh, and some cake too. All the rest, we grow and cook at home.”
Tzvetanka’s name originates from the Bulgarian verb цъфтя, meaning to bloom, and women with this name are destined through the will of their families to create and value the beauty in life through art. Right away, Tzvetanka was flattered by my interest in her needlework and proud to show me all of the laces she had sewn years ago. Unlike other women of her generation, she self-taught herself to knit and had accumulated an antique-value collection of crochet design magazines. She had a chest full of laces and we sat for hours going through them, her telling me each piece’s story. One she did for her daughter, another was a model she had taken from her grandmother’s white collar, a third would be something she made up herself. She hadn’t knitted in a long time.
“There is no time and no need for it now,” she said, visibly nostalgic.
In Tzvetanka’s treasure box I found two handstitched white collars especially beautiful and asked her if she could take out the model and with my help develop them to fit a modern product so more people could indulge in its beauty and cherish its history.
She hesitated but said she would try.
I sighed in relief. It wasn’t keneta, Tzvetanka wasn’t a keneta artisan, but I found a clearly high-skilledartisan with a creative mind and a beautiful soul,and we would try. That was more than enough for the day. With the sun setting, I happily took the road back, out of my daydream come true.
In the following months Tzvetanka would call me with questions on measures, number of loops, she would ask her grandson to send me pictures of ready motifs and would wait for my confirmation to proceed accordingly. But with time and my encouragement she grew more confident until one day she welcomed me with a ready piece, telling me ‘I thought to ask you, but knew you would say to make it as best as I can, so I did.’ It has been such a delight to see Tzvetanka unfold her creativity and courage at such a scale for maybe the first time in her life. It was a wonderful journey we were taking together.
I travelled to her a few times more, showed her some other designs I had seen in books or in other homes and asked for her insight on how the model could be developed further. Once I even asked her to complete a research assignment for me – go through her magazine collection and mark all models of a certain symbol. We had grown to be partners and I would look forward to each of our meetings when in addition to discussing models and threads, I would be treated to delicious homemade lunches and cakes and candies for my kids back home.
At present there are twenty-five artisans stitching lace for ODAYA Home. Yet, Tzvetanka is to this day the most precise and skilled master of all and while secluded in the nestled village of Sestrimo, she connects with the world through her work and feels empowered and appreciated.
Sometimes we intend to get to a certain place for a reason we know. Quite frequently we get to another place for a reason that we don’t yet know, but we learn later. Tzvetanka, her stone house, and the curvy roads that had us meet, will always be part of the foundation of ODAYA Home and all of us in the twenty-first-century part of the project are working twice as hard knowing our success is also a validation of her legacy in the exceptional world of lacemaking.
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