“The Worldly Patriarch” Quilt

A few years ago, when my father was still alive and the world was still sane, I wrote a blog post about my dad’s sukkah. I had no idea then that only two short years later my father would die suddenly, and that his sukkah will never be rebuilt. The old pieces of cloth that served as the sukkah’s walls remained stored and untouched in my mom’s attic.

During that last summer I got to spend with my mother, she decided to distribute the sukkah’s cloths. My sister took the carefully-embroidered door piece, so skillfully made by my great aunt Hannah. I went over the rest. Some beautiful pieces of silk Ikat, probably woven in Bukhara in the 19th century, were so dry rotted that they literally crumbled in my hands. I gave them a pass.

Instead, I chose a few pieces from the sturdier-looking cottons. Those, too, have seen better days. Being over a hundred years old, possibly closer to two hundred, and stored in sub-par conditions, they bore the marks of time. Some, as the piece in the picture below, were already mended long ago. From the tiny, even stitches I am guessing that this mending was done by a woman, perhaps my great grandmother Gele herself, or maybe one of her daughters.

Others bore the cruder, hurried and less-patient mending that was my father’s work:

In fact, it seems that in an effort to preserve the crumbling cloth and keep it in service longer, my dad sloppily sewed it onto an old bed sheet, a remnant from the early years of my parents’ marriage:

His hurried mounting left deep creases in the old cloth:

When I took the sukkah’s fabrics, I promised my mom that I would use them in a quilt honoring their original owner: my great grandfather Haim.

My Great Grandfather Haim Lipkin

My great grandfather Haim Lipkin was born in 1872 in Hebron, one of the four historical Jewish centers in the Holy Land, then under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. He was the fourth child of his parents Eite Toibe and Yitzhak. After he married Gele Schlank of Jerusalem, he moved there to live with his wife’s brother. The picture below shows my great grandparents when they were young.

In Jerusalem Haim started to trade in grain and other agricultural crops, like his father before him. After a few years he gained enough financial independence to afford a dwelling of his own. He moved with his family to an apartment in Chosh De’Rabbi Tzadok, the courtyard in the Jewish Quarter where his wife Gele grew up.  

Slowly, his family began to expand, and so did his business. His trade grew in new directions, and became international. He worked with agents in different countries in Europe, and traveled there extensively (the picture below is from one of his passports). He and his family often vacationed in Europe and in Beirut, then the “Paris of the Middle East.”

As a hobby, Haim developed a passion for ancient Jewish coins found around the land of Israel. He had a unique collection of such coins, which he later donated to the Betzalel Museum, which become the Israel Museum. Many of the coins on display at the museum now came from his collection.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Haim and his family moved to a house that his father in law left for them in Nahalat Shiv’a, the third Jewish neighborhood built outside the Old City’s walls. My own grandfather, Zwi, was born in that house. A few years later, after his father, Yitzhak, built Ohel Shlomo, the family moved there.

When WWI broke out, Haim helped secure and distribute food to the hungry Jewish community in Jerusalem, relying on his extensive trade contacts. After the war, the Ottoman Empire fell, and Israel was put under a British mandate. Haim was elected to serve as one of the Jewish representatives on the Jerusalem City Council. Gradually, he passed more and more of his business responsibilities to his sons, and concentrated on social activism, philanthropy and his hobbies. The picture below shows him with four of his seven children. My grandfather is the second person from the left.

In his later years, Haim sometimes sat on the balcony on the second floor of his house in Ohel Shlomo, overlooking Jaffa Street. Every now and then he chatted with an old man who sat outside the tinsmith workshop right across the street: Anchel Fruchter, the father of the tinsmith. The two elderly men, one a poor newcomer from Stryi, Galicia, the other a wealthy, influential Holy Land native, never imagined that years later their grandchildren, my future parents, would meet and marry each other… 

In 1936 Haim and Gele’s youngest son, Adam (standing on the right in the picture above), died in an accident. Heartbroken, the elderly couple moved to Tel Aviv, to live in the same building where my grandfather and one of his brothers lived with their families. As a result, my father had the great privilege of growing up with his grandparents on the first floor.

Haim passed away in 1956. He is buried in Tel Aviv.

“The Worldly Patriarch” Quilt

To create a quilt about my great grandfather, I decided to include, in addition to his picture and the sukkah cloth, a postcard addressed to him, rubbings of ancient Jewish coins he kept in one of his notebooks, and a list of items in his inventory. As in the quilts I made about my maternal great grandmother and about Haim’s father Yitzhak, I had pictures of all of the above commercially printed on canvas.

The postcard, which I cropped to emphasize Haim’s name (spelled “Chaim”), was sent from from Austria by one of his cousins who traveled there for vacation. As in the case of the letter written to Haim’s father, Yitzhak, this, too was simply addressed to “Chaim Lipkin, Jerusalem,” as it was well known who he was and where he lived. Although, in the bottom line, in brackets, the cousin added “Abu el Bassal,” the nickname of the neighborhoods built by Haim’s father, just in case.

The inventory list and coin rubbings were taken from Haim’s notebooks. Below is a random page from one such book:

I started by choosing sukkah cloth pieces from the few I received from my mom. I settled on a piece that included the old, female mending, the marks of my dad’s mending, and his imperfect preservation efforts. I wanted these old fabrics to be a major part of the composition. More than that: I actually planned the entire quilt around them. In a way, this quilt is as much about the fabrics of the sukkah as it is about my great grandfather.

Cutting up the ancient cloth required some courage, but was inevitable. I arranged the pieces into a composition with the other components, adding a few upholstery pieces from my own, upcycled stash.

When I put the quilt together, I noticed that even the better-off sukkah pieces I selected were quite battered. There were areas where the fabric disintegrated completely. There, I had to add some of my own fabric beneath.

Other areas were in the midst of fraying. In those, I added my own touch to the existing mending done by my great grandmother and my father. I actually darned the cloth, the way my mom’s mom taught me to mend socks. I liked how the old cloth became something that marked time and connected several generations of my family, with each of us leaving our own marks on it at different periods. By using a mending method I learned from my maternal grandmother on a piece of cloth that came from my dad’s side of the family, I also blended separate parts of my ancestry.

After piecing everything together, I gently machine quilted the sukkah cloth.

I “fixed” some of the creases my dad created in his hasty conservation efforts by stitching them shut.

Finally, I hand stitched the area around my great grandfather’s portrait.

The Worldly Patriarch is 43.5″ x 33.”

This quilt was the last piece of art I promised my mom to make before she passed away. It took me two years and three months to fulfil my promises to her. I hope she can see my work from heaven, and that she approves.

******

The Worldly Patriarch was juried into SAQA’s Virtual Exhibition Connection with Fabric. You can view it  Online.