Aba’s Archive, an Art Quilt Series

My Father’s Archive

Many of my artworks in the last few years originated in the summer of 2021, my mom’s last summer. That summer, among other things, I helped my mother tidy up my late father’s home office. In that messy, treasure-filled space we found the small box of index cards which held the dried algae that inspired first my seaweed art series, and then the Yaacov’s Algae series. We also came across parts of my aba‘s archive (“aba” is Hebrew for “dad”), containing personal and business correspondence belonging to his grandfather and great grandfather, documents written one to two hundred years ago.

My father, a true renaissance man, was also a passionate genealogist who dedicated decades of his life to the study of our origins and the lives of our ancestors. His archive included various documents, mostly hand written, in many different languages: Hebrew, Yiddish, Arabic, English and various European languages. My dad was a professor at a time when students still submitted hand-written papers and tests, and was highly skilled in deciphering handwriting. Over the years, he carefully studied the documents in his archive, transcribing many of them and translating the ones written in foreign languages. He organized everything meticulously, with the intention of writing a book one day, which he never got to do.

Sadly, the secrets to my aba‘s archive and its sorting system died with him. When my mom and I came across parts of his archive, neither of us could easily read the documents, not even those written in languages we knew. Even though I couldn’t effortlessly read them, however, the historian in me was awed by their age and sentimental value. The artist in me, meanwhile, valued the visual beauty of those old letters. The calligraphy of many of them was striking. I took pictures of some of the ones that impressed me most, with the intention of somehow incorporating them into my art. Not for their content, but rather for their visual strength alone. 

Old Letters as an Abstract Pattern

When I prepared my ancestors’ pictures to send out to a commercial printer after my mom passed away, I also included in the same order some of the pictures I took of the calligraphy from my aba‘s archive. They printed beautifully, but I didn’t use them right away. Instead, I set them aside while I was working on other projects. Eventually, their turn came.

The archive papers aged into many different colors. Some were yellowed with age. Some developed rust or water marks. Others grayed or turned pink. When I began planning the quilts, I decided to use the color of the documents as a starting point. All other fabrics, I decided, will have to match the color of the printed calligraphy.

Aba’s Archive 1

For the first quilt, I chose two different letters with two different handwritings. Both were written on similarly-colored paper, beige with rust marks. I searched through my stash of FabMo upholstery samples, and selected swatches in matching colors. I cut the different fabrics, including those with writing on them, into strips of varying widths, and arranged them in rows, paying attention to the distribution of patterns and colors.

As a historian, I deeply value old papers. I respect old texts and see them as important resources for understanding the past. Using written documents as just a pattern, therefore, required a conscious effort. Slicing documents, even if just copies of the real thing, gave me a cringe, but I made myself do it anyway.

When I was happy with the composition, I stitched the strips onto the background. 

The result was a bit … dull. Two thin strips of bright red took care of that.

I added some hand stitching as a final touch.

Aba’s Archive 1 reminded me of an edited manuscript, with corrections, erasures and maybe some censorship. More specifically, it made me think of me of my dissertation drafts after my advisor finished with them…

Aba’s Archive 2

The archival letter I chose for the second quilt was written on a pink-tinted paper. The fabrics I chose to incorporate with it, therefore, also included a lot of pink. For a bit of spark I added touches of mustard, as I did in similarly-colored pieces in my Flow and Contrasts series. In addition to FabMo swatches in a wonderful array of textures, I also included some gel-printed and stamped fabric.

For this quilt I decided to play with larger rectangles of varying sizes and proportions, which I arranged in an orderly-yet-irregular manner. I liked how the arrangement of the rectangles contrasted with the wobbly, tilted lines of the hand writing.

I finished this quilt, too, with a touch of hand embroidery.

The final result:

Aba’s Archive 3

The third and last quilt in this series started with a letter written on paper that seemed to go well with brick-colored swatches. This time, too, I added mustard as an accent. The handwriting on this letter went both horizontally and vertically, which I found interesting. Paper was expensive when this letter was written, and the author tried to use every available inch of it. I structured this quilt in accordance with the writing, cutting the fabrics into thin rectangles that go both vertically and horizontally, almost like in a weaving.

I stitched this piece, like the two before it, with lots of different thread colors.

The final touches of hand embroidery, also in many different embroidery floss colors, make a big difference in this quilt as well.

The finished Aba’s Archive 3:

The Series

All three pieces in this series are 37″ x 26.”

The letters I used for these quilts were all written in Hebrew, in old-style calligraphy using fountain pens and ink. I myself, despite being a native Hebrew speaker, can only understand some of the words and parts of some sentences. I’ve never been very good at reading messy script, and this is old writing. Other people might be more skilled than me, and might be able to understand more. I’ve cut the letters in such a way, however, that even experienced readers will not be able to read more than fragments. I wanted the writing to be a form of abstract pattern, not a readable text. I like the way that the hand written marks interact with the mostly-solid, textured textiles from my stash. The hints of life stories hiding within the letters add depth and mystery, but at the end of the day are just a part of the abstract.

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Today is the Jewish holiday of Purim. It’s a happy holiday, but for my family it is now tinted with sadness. Exactly six years ago today my beloved aba passed away without warning. Although he is no longer physically here, though, he continues to live in my heart and thoughts, forever guiding and inspiring.