There
is currently a traveling exhibit of Latvian mittens in New York's largest
needlepoint and knitting store Annie and Company, located at 1763 2nd
Avenue on the SW corner of 92nd Street, and it is going to be there until December 31, 2017.
This exhibit has already been in San Francisco and Denver, and will be traveling to
St. Louis, Cleveland, Minneapolis and Seattle in the upcoming year. Volunteers from the
Latvian community and American knitters who admire Latvian mittens are hosting
the exhibition.
What can we see in this exhibition?
A
collection of 45 pairs of mittens from the American Latvian Association’s folk
art collection at Priedaine, Freehold,
NJ; these are ethnographically correct reproductions of mittens found in
Latvian museum collections. They were knitted for the museum's collection by Latvian Americans during the 1970’s through the 1980’s. There are also
posters and several informative books about Latvian mittens.
How did this exhibition come about?
As
every great idea – it’s a combination of being in the right place, at the right
time… On an August night in 2016, on the last evening of the Latvian cultural
camp "3x3" in Gaŗezers, Michigan, no one was going to sleep although the formal event was finished. We all knew that many of us would not see each
other until the following August, and more than one new friendship had been made, and fantastic
ideas born.
I was
discussing Latvian folk costumes with a friend from the East Coast
when she mentioned that there are more than 300 pairs of Latvian mittens at the
ethnographic museum. Her name is Lilita Bergs, and she has been in charge of
the American Latvian Association’s folk art collection at Priedaine in Freehold NJ for 30 years. We kept talking about the
museum and folk costumes into the night, and the next morning I went back home,
to California.
A few months
later in San Francisco, people from all the Latvian organizations in Northern
California came together to brainstorm "How to celebrate Latvia100."
I was thinking along the lines of “what do people know and like about Latvia,”
and as a knitter of many years and familiar with the online knitting community, I was aware of the interest in Latvian mittens. I asked the knitters
in ravelry.com (Facebook for knitters, very addictive, think twice before you
join!) if people would be interested in an exhibition of Latvian mittens, and received a positive response.
As a
result, the idea was born; I knew that there was a Latvian mitten collection,
and I knew that there was interest in seeing it – if I could connect the two...
The
funny thing is, that from the beginning I sort of knew how I would exhibit the
mittens; I would secure them somehow, maybe even hang them... That’s how it
started, with the image of beautiful mittens hanging in the air and people
seeing them and figuring out how they were made. I called Lilita Bergs and said
"I have an idea, your museum’s mittens traveling around U.S. Latvian
centers." Lilita agreed.
I
talked for many hours about the logistics of the exhibit with Lilita and my
friend Una Veilande (who is deeply involved with all Latvian organizations in
Northern California), both of whom had very good ideas and suggestions (which I
“borrowed”). At one point the plan became clear; Lilita would send me a box of mittens and a few
books about mittens. We would make posters. The exhibit would be big enough
to fill smaller rooms, and to inspire larger Latvian communities to add other
materials and activities to their local events, but also small enough so that it would not be too expensive to send it to Latvian centers around the United States.
Each city can decide for themselves how many resources and volunteers to
devote to the project: they can organize lectures about ornaments and patterns
of mittens, hold basic or advanced knitting workshops, have books, articles and
magazines about mittens and Latvian folk costumes, offer Latvian food, feature activities
for children, and exhibit mittens owned by local Latvians with stories about
their origins... The last one was my favorite part of the exhibition in San
Francisco.
For
our mitten exhibition at the San Francisco Latvian Hall we decided to have a
“mitten book library,” food, a lecture about the history of mittens, a
beginning knitting workshop “What my Grandmother told me” - and my favorite -
mittens owned by local Latvians. 6 weeks before the opening of the exhibit I
invited members of the Northern
California Latvian community to participate by contributing
mittens from their homes, and to write a short description about their
contribution. In a week mittens started to arrive. Opening the packages was
better than Christmas! I can’t decide if I was more impressed by the patterns
and tautiskie raksti (folk symbols) on the mittens, or by the stories that came with them. I got a
box with mittens from a storage facility near Los Angeles from the Latvian Art
exhibition of the 1989 West Coast Latvian Song Festival. Then I received a pair of mittens
made in a Displaced Persons Camp in Europe after WWII around 1947 when Viviana
was 17; the mittens look uneven, because they are made from a ripped sweater. (Viviana‘s
friend got some blue yarn and Viviana got the red & white, and although the
mittens were made in terrible conditions after the war by a young knitter, they
were still decorated with rich symbolism.) There were white gloves from Rūta's
parents’ wedding in the 1930s - a rare example of pre-WWII wool
from Latvia. One pair of mittens was made by the granddaughter of so called
“Old Latvians,” Latvians who moved to San Francisco before WWII; the knitter
didn’t know too much about Latvian culture, but she bought Lizbeth Upitis’ book
and learned how to knit Latvian mittens.
Before
this exhibition I didn’t know too much about Latvian mittens, but that has changed. For example, I
learned that we have a tradition to give tautiskie cimdi as a present for almost every occasion.
Being on a “mitten high” I decided to give a presentation on the history of
Latvian mittens, and I started reading every Latvian mitten book I had and
corresponding with the authors about copyrights. As a result I had a reason to
reconnect with my friends in the knitting community in Latvia, Canada, and the
United States, and I made a few new friends as well. There are so many of us
who like to talk about the symbols and patterns of mittens!
For
Latvians, mittens are part of our cultural heritage. They were a demonstration
of a young lady’s craftsmanship, and expected from future wives. They were
given as presents and were a symbol of good luck. At some point in history specific
types of mittens were used as a “yes” to a marriage proposal, as a thank you,
or to cement an agreement. A young bride had been making mittens for her
wedding since she was young girl, since for an average wedding at least 40
pairs of fine mittens would be needed as gifts. The volume of mittens in a
wedding was also proof of the family’s wealth and social status.
Home-dyed
wool yarn in a wide range of slightly muted natural shades was used until the
middle of the 19th century, when aniline dyes were invented and Latvian
women started incorporating bolder combinations of colors and shades into their
knits. Latvian women know the common motifs by name, as well as their meaning.
For example, the symbol that resembles two letters “E” back-to-back is called Ūsiņš,
and represents the figure from Latvian folklore who was responsible for the horses.
Mittens that incorporate the Ūsiņš symbol
protect the rider during trips, and it would be logical that this mitten would also
be given to someone who takes care of horses. There were also special mittens
made for funerals.
American
knitters admire craftsmanship. They are interested in patterns and techniques.
The knitters want to know how mittens are made, what kind of wool was used, and
why this specific example was made in the “S “direction. What kind of needles are used? How do you hold your hand?
Which way do you manage several threads? And, yes, of course - what kind of
sheep did you have back then? Well, the night between the first and second day
of the exhibition in San Francisco was spent googling everything I could find
about sheep in Latvia in the 19th century. (It turns out Latvians used
to breed short-tailed sheep!) I truly admire the enthusiasm with which I was
met in the international knitting community. We Latvians don’t often think of
how our way of knitting fits into the world’s knitting tradition. We just knit
the way we learned from older family members, a tradition that may be on its
way of getting lost in the modern age.
This
exhibition was one of those happy projects where many people volunteered their
time and skills... There wouldn’t be posters without Linda. Countless hours by
Džoanna and Ilona in San Francisco cutting paper and working on the displays,
Rūta and Madara who took care of the Latvian food. Una who kept everything
going and did most of the paperwork. Raita with her team to organize the
exhibit in Denver, and Jeanny for telling her story about her love for Latvian
mittens. Inga in New York who is hosting the exhibition now.
Thank
you to all the friends who agreed to host the exhibition next year! I’m very
grateful for your help and willingness to do this. The exhibit is traveling to
the following Latvian centers in 2018: St. Louis at the end of January, Cleveland at
the end of February, and Minneapolis at the beginning of March. Seattle will
host the exhibition at the end of May, and there is a possibility of the
exhibit traveling to Latvian centers in the Midwest afterwards.
If you
are interested in hosting this exhibition, please contact Māra at maara.linde@gmail.com.
Latvian Mittens, Traveling Exhibition could be available to come to your city as
early as June of 2018.
A big paldies to Māra for introducing the Latvian Mittens exhibit to 24 Days of a Baltic Christmas! Our local Latvian community hosts a table at the
International Festival in Spartanburg every year, and the most popular items
are usually our tautiskie cimdi, so I
have no doubt the exhibition will continue to be a success!
To stay updated on the travels
of the exhibit, please follow the Latvian Mittens, Traveling Exhibition Facebook
page. This traveling exhibit is presented as part of the celebration of the
Republic of Latvia’s 100th anniversary; information
on LV100 can be found on the Centenary website, as well as on the American
Latvian Association Centenary website for events occurring in the US.
Please join us again tomorrow
on the winter solstice with a quick jaunt to Seattle, Washington and the Christmas bazaar there…
(Knit Like a Latvian, now available for pre-order!)
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