The precious motifs pictured here were all made between 2020-2021 in the US and Armenia by poet, weaver, scholar, and singer Elise Youssoufian. Made of perle or cordonnet cotton thread, they each only measure a few inches wide.
Remarkably, Elise has only 3 years' experience in this craft (and recently took up Armenian carpet-weaving). Just before the pandemic, Elise went on pilgrimage to reconnect with her ancestral places in Turkey and Armenia—and that's where she was honored to be instructed in the art of Armenian needle lace. The Armenians she met with there were astonished when she made clear her longing to learn the craft of her grandmothers (for what would a modern American-Armenian care for such things?)—and were even more astonished when she soon began to manifest an obvious innate talent for it.
She took to the millennia-old craft with surprising ease. Within the designs, you can see motifs of hills and mountains, trees, and landscapes. As she repeats this imagery in her lace, Elise hopes to "return to her grandmother mountain beside the Mediterranean Sea."
As the granddaughter of displaced genocide survivors and the child of orphaned immigrants, Elise describes making Armenian lace as a spiritual practice. It keeps her grounded during the pandemic and gives her a tangible connection to her culture, threatened by historic and ongoing erasure. For her, it is an act of resistance, of solidarity, of love. The art itself has ancient roots, many millennia old. In the region the patterns are found on Armenian wood and stone carvings, and ceramics; they form "a net of protection intended to beguile, entrap and confuse evil spirits and intentions."
Appropriate, as creating needle lace became Elise's strategy for enduring the stressors of recent years—her method of promoting internal and external peace. To that end, she remains mindful when she is building these pieces (not in times of anger, for example)... and keeps her handiwork close during Zoom meetings, etc. The benefit of the craft is its discreet compactness and portability: you can take it with you anywhere, and literally all you need is a needle and thread.
Elise is a student at the California Institute of Integral Studies working on a PhD in Philosophy & Religion with a Concentration in Women's Spirituality; she is also a columnist for the Armenian Weekly. Read her work for a glimpse into her world, or follow her on Instagram: she's @eliseweaves. Elise is also the creator of Sound of Ten Thousand Stones, "an Armenian-led arts initiative sparking creation in response to cultural destruction."