Threads of Life

by Clare Hunter

  Ukrainian stitched heritage was destroyed. By enforcing a break with tradition, the Soviet authorities engineered a natural loss of embroidery practice and knowledge. Traditional Ukrainian embroidery of red-and-black stitched designs on a white background conveyed goddess worship and family connections though symbols, codes and talismanic motifs. It was ritualistic, honouring the divine genesis of man and nature translated through a geometric abstraction of circles, stylised branches and spirals. It harboured family chronicles of ethnicity and belief. The new Soviet patterns, reduced to simplified, pleasing arrangements of shapes and motifs, were no longer organised in meaningful relationship to each other. The making and displaying of traditional textiles no longer amplified the rites-of-passage ceremonies they had originally been designed to accompany.

  After the Soviet Union was disbanded in 1991, states had to grope their way back to a lost sense of nationality and try to revive their dormant cultural identities. Ukrainians took to wearing traditional dress to celebrate their independence. But the cultural dislocation during the decades of Soviet rule had led to an interruption of the visual literacy of traditional needlework; the lines between authentic and Soviet-invented designs became blurred.

  Like the kilt, contemporary Ukrainian embroidery has become a fusion of reality and romance. Ancient symbols are still apparent but lack their traditional context, robbed of the rituals that endowed them with spiritual significance. Soviet-bred folk art has been subsumed into a more general design pool. But does that matter? It still references Ukraine, and that is what its young people want to celebrate: the culture of their country and its independent spirit of survival. What if its contemporary embroidery harbours traces of political upheaval or tells of domination? That, too, is part of the fabric of its nation.

  More recent upheavals in Ukraine have brought a new worldwide political and emotional significance to the wearing of its embroidery. It is as if its presence, not its particularities, have become important. Vyshyvanka Day, which began in 2007 and takes place annually on 21 May, is a demonstration and affirmation of Ukrainian national identity. All over the world the Ukrainian diaspora join the people in Ukraine to don embroidered vyshyvanka shirts. This is a partriotic act of solidarity by a freed people, supported by celebrities and international fashion designers, restoring the social fabric of Ukrainian heritage and stamping their claim to a distinct identity.

  Many revolutions, in their overthrow of a ruling class, have led to a crisis of identity in which the emergent democracy is a new equality that demands a visible sign of a newly forged homogeneity. A different form of dress is an obvious strategy. During the French Revolution, the exquisite, extravagant dress of the nobility became a passport to the guillotine. People of all classes quickly donned survival clothing in the form of simpler garb. The more zealous revolutionaries even adopted a Republican assemblage of red, white and blue.

  The tricolore cockade, a rosette attached to hats, became a ubiquitous symbol of the demise of the old regime and the triumph of the people, but it became contentious when a law was passed imposing its display. Thousands of women took to the streets in protest and the laws on dress were changed again. Women would be free to wear what they liked and did not need to sport a tricolore cockade. But their fashion liberty came at a cost: women’s political organisations were disbanded to avoid any further demonstrations. Men fared little better. Their revolutionary leaders devised a strict code of male attire based on occupation and political office. A new material hierarchy came into force, manifested by what men wore.

  During the Russian Revolution there were various attempts to invent a suitable dress as a visible signal of the arrival of a new socialist dawn. But ideas among the revolutionaries were conflicted. Some wanted to adopt peasant dress as a symbol of egalitarianism and to promote the new elevated status of agricultural workers. Others advocated the invention of a modern, utilitarian fashion and, responding to the challenge, constructivist artists designed versions of functional dress. They imagined clothing for workers that was safe and efficient, with pockets for those whose needed ready access to tools; streamlined work-wear for assembly-line workers endangered by heavy machinery; bold geometric shapes for sportsmen and women that emphasised their flow of movement at a distance. But however visionary, such clothing proved too expensive to manufacture.

  Finally, with more serious issues to contend with, the Russian revolutionary leaders settled for a laissez-faire approach of eccentric nonchalance. A lack of care about what you wore became a political act: crumpled clothes, mismatching accessories and patched shoes all announced revolutionary loyalty.

  China was more decisive. Its Cultural Revolution banned what was termed the Four Old Things: old customs, old culture, old ideas and old habits. Western dress was confiscated and people were instructed to destroy their traditional cheongsam dresses. An obligatory uniformity was imposed, known as ‘cadre clothes.’ This consisted of a suit or unisex jacket and trousers in dull colours of blue or grey. Chairman Mao’s heroic posters show him dressed in it, clutching his little red book in his outstretched hand. It can still be seen in China today, worn by an older generation still in thrall to Maoist fear and revolutionary hope.

  National upheaval, whether through colonialisation or revolution, often leads to an alteration in the visible identity of its people. Traditional costume has been outlawed, redesigned or reinvented to create a different version of a tribe or nation. But in post-war Holland, a new form of dress was invented as a rallying call to women to more clearly demonstrate their changing identity. It was their new idea of themselves that was to become the trigger for the creation of a garment which could represent an altered female consciousness.

  During the German occupation of Holland, women had played an equally courageous role as men through civilian resistance. They had suffered the same personal, social and political damage. Despite Holland’s declaration of neutrality at the start of the Second World War, Germany invaded. In just five days, in May 1940, 10,000 Dutch soldiers were killed, injured or reported missing. Rotterdam was blitzed and 25,000 homes were destroyed. The royal family and government fled to Britain for safety and Holland came under German control. Its population became divided between passive collaborators and active resistance. It was to lose the highest percentage of its Jewish citizens per capita than any other European nation with seventy-five percent killed, over 100,000 of them in concentration camps.

  The organisation of society in Holland, termed ‘pillarisation’, encouraged social, religious and political groupings to live independently of each other with separate facilities, schools and organisations. This social structure meant it was more complex for Dutch citizens to develop networks of mutual support during the war years. But non-Jewish citizens did provide support to Jewish civilians through Dutch resistance fighters. Mies Boissevain-van Lennep was one. She became involved in the reception of Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany, by hiding fugitives and providing them with false papers to aid their escape. Her house was a base for Dutch resistance and two of her sons were members of the resistance cell known as CS-6.

  In 1943 her home was raided by the Nazis. They found the falsified papers for secreted Jews and a cache of ammunition in the cellar. Her eldest daughter was imprisoned in Holland, her husband and one of her sons were taken to Dachau concentration camp, where they died. Her two other sons and her nephew were executed by firing squad, but not before they had scrawled on the wall of their cell in their own blood ‘No regret for things past, no fear for the future’, the family’s motto. Mies was incarcerated in a holding camp, before being moved to the notorious Ravensbruck camp where she shared a cell with seventy-three other women. Some of her cell mates died, other became deranged, all were traumatised. By the time she was liberated in 1945 over 90,000 women and children had died in the camp.

  After the war, Mies, like many other Dutch women, was determined to play an active part in the reconstruction of her war-damaged country. The war h
ad changed women’s view of themselves and they were not prepared to return to their pre-war gendered roles as politically passive wives and mothers. They had been transformed by their war experiences, when they had worked alongside their male counterparts, shared their acts of resistance and paid the same price of personal loss, deprivation and, for many, imprisonment. Dutch women campaigned for their right to participate in the economic and social reconstruction of their country.

  In 1946 they formed new organisations: the Dutch Women’s Movement, the Dutch Women’s Committee and the Union of Women Volunteers. Mies herself set up a women’s political party called Practical Politics and, while it never won a seat in government, it was influential in raising the profile of women’s demands. But lobbying, being on committees and campaigning still did not prevent the old male order regaining ground and political authority. Mies decided on a different tactic to promote the altered ambition and political awareness of post-war Dutch women by creating a visible marker of their war contribution as a symbol of their potential and strength.

  She took as her inspiration a small hand-made patchwork-scarf she had found hidden beneath her laundry when she was in a prison camp. The scarf had been fashioned by friends from tiny, bright fabric remnants from her own life: her children’s clothes, her dance gowns, scraps from friends’ and fellow resistance fighters’ clothes. It had been smuggled in as a touchstone of support, to remind her of who she was. That scarf had become her talisman of survival. Now, she decided, there was need of something similar to publicly demonstrate the courage, resolve and solidarity of Dutch women, to remind others of women’s place in Holland’s history and their right to play a part in forging its future.

  She called on women to make what she called the ‘skirt of life’ and others named the ‘liberation skirt,’ the ‘national celebration skirt’ or the ‘magic skirt of reconstruction:’ a patchwork skirt with its separate pieces made meaningful by a personal connection to a past event or person. Each skirt border would be hemmed in fabric triangles on which were to be embroidered significant dates of family or political life. The first triangle was to mark Holland’s first Liberation Day: 5 May 1945. All the skirts were to be registered and receive an official stamp, and women were to wear them at public events, family weddings and on the annual Liberation Day women’s processions.

  One that survives was sewn by Mrs J. de Jong-Brouwer. Its hem is bordered in orange triangles, the Dutch colour of defiance during occupation and the colour of Holland’s royal family. The skirt has sixty patches on which are embossed vignettes of a war-torn Holland: a candle to record electricity shortages; a fingerprint to represent the enforced carrying of identity cards during German occupation; a chocolate bar, one of the small luxuries that appeared after liberation. The Jewish yellow star sits alongside the Nazis’ own emblem, the swastika. Kidnappings, arrests, executions are all documented. Mrs J. de Jong-Brouwer’s skirt was just one of 4,000 made in total, skirts pieced in cloth fragments that held memory: the remnants of a hidden child’s coat, a dead son’s shirt, fabric from a refugee’s coat, parachute silk, cloth that might have been stitched, washed and ironed over and over again, felt in a hug, folded into a drawer, packed in a case.

  Mies intended these skirts to be therapeutic as well as symbolic, a way to heal past pain and record present effort and future joys. She suggested that they were made in the company of other women so that stories could be shared, solidarity found and confidence strengthened. Their making would be as much a political and patriotic act as the wearing of the skirts themselves. And women wore them as declarations of their readiness and capacity to share in the reconstruction of their country, as reminders of the sacrifices they too had made and overcome. The skirts were metaphors for women’s ability to unify, from diverse and damaged parts, a swirl of promise and progress. As the women processed past the houses of parliament in 1948 wearing their skirts they sang ‘The Hymn of the National Celebration Skirt’:

  Shape by your skirt a together-connectedness,

  Unite multiple forms, colours and lines;

  In the stream of historic events

  Embroider the design with your heart and your hand.

  Stamp your skirt with the mark of your days,

  Colour your flag with what Was and Will Be;

  The Present, the Past – merrily borne,

  Let them adorn your costume, your family, your life.

  The refugees in Palestine, the revolutionaries across Europe, the Ukrainian diaspora, the Herero tribes, the women of Holland all found diverse ways to assert an identity through what they stitched and wore. They harnessed the skill and connotations of needlework to reclaim, restore and register the value of the societies that shaped them, and create visible reminders of their nations’ past heritage and future possibilities.

  6

  Connection

  My husband’s aunt has decided to clear out her house. She enlists the help of my husband to trawl through its contents. With a small allowance for sentiment they separate the worthless from the valuable: the worthless destined for the skip; the potentially valuable kept for an auctioneer to survey and take what might sell. She leaves the attic for Charlie and me to take care of. We can take, she says, anything we like.

  It’s strange to go into a home that’s on the cusp of becoming just a house. Everything that made it a home is still present but misplaced, huddled in piles of dislocation. Books that were once in order on the shelves are now pillared on the floor, toppling towers of crockery cluster on table tops, a drawer of old kitchen utensils is cushioned on the drawing room sofa and a long-silent dinner gong sulks on a high shelf.

  There are traces of past gentility, of soirees, servants and supper parties, all now gently erased. Bone china cups lack saucers, engraved and fluted wine glasses are clouded in dust, elaborate dinner services are incomplete, the gleam of silver cutlery dimmed. It is all too grand for our little house. I pick out an enamel bread bin and a plain pale-green jug that will do justice to a posy of garden flowers. These we will keep.

  We go up to the attic. There seems to be little here: a few cardboard boxes of books, an old trunk tucked under the cobwebbed eaves, the acrid smell of mouse pee. I open the trunk. Neatly folded, each one obscuring the next, is a tightly packed trove of textiles. I bring them out into the light. There are damask napkins, their woven sheen revealing floats of flowers; a deeply fringed cream silk shawl embroidered in cascades of roses; an entire gypsy outfit, its black velvet bodice jingling with a trim of gold coins; a fur-trimmed tribal coat of rich brocade; a set of place mats in delicate turquoise voile embroidered with pagodas and men on camels. There are half a dozen Victorian baby dresses, ghost white, their broderie anglaise ruffles still sharp with starch. They look unworn. I unfold a long, stiff apron with a red cross stitched to its bib: part of the regulation uniform of a First World War nurse, which Charlie thinks must have belonged to his great aunt. Another apron of hers, its bib inserted with lace. Later, we find a photograph of Great Aunt Maime wearing this very apron. She is young, dreamy, her eyes fixed on faraway possibilities, her hair swept up in fastidious curls and her hands demurely fastened in her lap.

  At the bottom of the trunk, folded below lace-edged tablecloths, hand-stitched linen folders filled with skeins of silk thread and tea cosies in a seasonal shift of embroidered flowers, at the very bottom, lying drowsy in its own warmth, is a vast patchwork quilt.

  We lift it out. It is perfectly worked in a wonder of tiny figured cotton hexagons in pale browns and apricots, faded pinks and fragile blues. I do a rough count. There are over 6,000 pieces. That means over 6,000 hexagons drawn and cut out of paper, another 6,000, slightly larger, drawn and cut out of assorted fabric. Each and every fabric hexagon folded over its companion piece of paper and stitched to it, each of its eight corners tucked neatly in, a fiddly and laborious task. Only when each piece has been individually stitched can assembly begin: each side of each hexagon attached edge to edge to another with meticulou
s care, in tiny stitches on the reverse, to ensure strength in density. Such an intensity of stitches is vital if the quilt is not to break apart in the endless lifting and shifting of its weight as it does its duty over the many years ahead.

  Only once all the hexagons are stitched together, these ones in a repeating pattern called Grandmother’s Garden, can the stitches that held the paper in place be unpicked and the paper removed. Only then can the quilt be backed and pressed and bordered in binding, ready to smooth over the large, high bed, where it will cover the love-making, conceiving, sleeping, recuperating, dying of my husband’s family, generation upon generation.

  Along with the jug and the enamel bread bin, we take the quilt and the other trunk-trapped textiles back to our own home. I simmer the age-stained cottons in large pans from which vapour wafts in a nostalgic scent of starch. I lay the more delicate fabrics in baths of tepid water and watch them relax, rehydrate and reclaim their softness. For hours I stand at the ironing board and press each piece into the best version of itself that can be mustered. It is a ritual of respect, a kind of honouring of its makers, of women long gone. While I have no connection to them, they play a part in my husband’s and our children’s history. Once every piece is pressed and folded, each tangled strip of lace unravelled, smoothed out and rewound, I invite my in-laws to come and take their pick of the fabric bounty. What they leave I keep, not as commodities, but as keepsakes of past lives, the remnants of women’s labours of love.