Hymn to an old Thob

When I was very young, society was at a stage where anything old was deprecated or otherwise considered unstylish.  The new was what mattered.  Danish Modern furniture had superceded the wonderful intricate old furniture in the Victorian, Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles.  People stripped wallpaper from their walls, gutted their homes and replaced EVERYTHING with sleek, modern designs.

I hated it all.  It never resonated with me at all.  I delighted in the intricate, the ornate, the unnecessary.  I did not understand what prompted or motivated the desperate search for the new, the unrooted...  To me, it was History that mattered, ALWAYS.

It still does.  Oddly enough, when my generation grew into adulthood, we embraced the old and people began to find beauty in the Victorian, Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles.  Mucha became very popular and indeed, the Decadent and Symbolist artists enjoyed a new renaissance in the Western world.

What I loved always became almost too trendy but I could not turn my back on the styles I always had loved.  I always was a little ahead of my time in fashion but there were certain constants that could not be sullied by overpopularity.

Another thing that mattered to me from my earliest childhood was symmetry in design.  I did not find it dull.  It satisfied something in my soul.  Perhaps it gave me an illusion of security or constancy in a childhood that lacked both.

It was only when I discovered the rich heritage of the Palestinian domestic arts that I was able to learn to cast aside my need for symmetry in everything.

I always argued that crafts were as much true art as anything put on a canvas.  Again, my point of view finally found favour with the masses or the art world, whomever they may be and now, jewelry, textiles and other 'crafts' ARE recognised as Art with a capital A.  I always loved fine textiles in a tactile way as well as for any designs in the cloth.

When I was  a young girl, I tried to make a medieval embroidered shirt for myself.  It was a horrible failure, frankly.  My mother found it and sent it to me a couple of years ago.  I was not happy to see it.  It was NOT beautiful and it really never became a viable article of clothing.  To make it into one would require a tremendous amount of work and I would rather give my energy to something better.

I did return to embroidery, however, when my daughter was a little girl.  My connection with Palestine originally was in the justice of the cause as well as the literature and history.  I loved thobs without ever paying much attention to the symbolism and detail of the garments.  I only began to comprehend the richness of THAT heritage when I obtained a couple of old thobs.

The thobs were not made of good fabric.  They were very worn as well and needed some work if they were to be worn again by any one.  In the process of redesigning them, I began to study the embroidery and indeed the symbolism and traditions that went into them.

The significance and symbolism that determines the general style of most traditional Palestinian thobs is extremely ancient.  It may go back to the Sumerians and Babylonian civilisation.  It definitely is found in the most ancient literature of the Arab world.

It is the 'breastplate' or 'qabbeh' that defines the thob and gives it power.  'Qabbeh' simply means 'cube' and is the name of one of the most powerful symbols of Islam, the black stone that fell from heaven and is cherished in the mosque in Mecca. 

A breastplate in terms of armour protects the vital organ of the heart and lungs.  It covers the chest.  A breastplate in terms of symbolic power protects the heart and soul of an individual.  Ancient breastplates often were set with gems, each of which had its own symbolism and power.  The Palestinian qabbeh often has many different embroidery patterns and colours incorporated into it, each of which has its own significance and power.

At the very outset, I had to come to terms with the fact that, although the qabbeh usually was symmetrical in design and pattern, this often was NOT the case with the rest of the thob.   Most thobs are made in embroidered panels.  Sometimes the same patterns are repeated throughout, but in other cases, you will find very different panels on the same thob.   Sometimes, the colours of the embroidery threads are constant, but often you will find a tiny little patch of embroidery in blue.  The blue may not be a complete pattern or design.  It may be a small part of another design, repeated nowhere on the thob.

Those first thobs of mine had not been the property of rich women.  The fabric was of poor quality and synthetic in nature.  It was chosen, I suspect, for its durability.  It could be soiled and yet washed clean.  It would dry quickly.  It would not tear easily.   On this rather unattractive fabric, however, was some of the most beautiful embroidery I ever had seen.

I was not the second owner of these thobs either.  They had been altered to fit a woman of a different size and small bits of fabric and embroidery had been added in places to cover a tear or stain.  In short, these thobs represented a limeline of sorts and I had joined the line of women whose lives were interwoven with these garments.

Although durable, they had sustained damage and they had to be altered to fit me as I evidently was taller than the former owners and the sleeves in particular were too short.

I have a couple of horsemen's coats from the steppes.  They, like my thobs, consisted of a number of different textiles.  One aspect of the two different garments that I noticed instantly was the use of other fabrics as a lining either to pad the gament or at the hemline.

Almost like a quilt, in a way, many different scraps of patterned fabrics had been used both on the horsemen's coats and on the thobs.  There was no rhyme nor reason to the patterns.  A pattern of red roses might live side by side with orange stripes and a dense pattern of abstract shapes.  It was obvious that the seamstress used whatever he/she had at hand.  Like makers of quilts, bags or boxes of fabric bits probably were saved for use in any project where they were needed.

I decided I would do likewise.  I cut a pair of silk trousers that always had been too wide for use as new long sleeves for my thob.  Other strips from the trousers were used to tie the colours and fabrics together somewhat.  A narrow band was sewn into the back and other strips were sewn between the embroidered panels on the skirt.  I added small triangles of silk on either shoulder and embroidered them myself, using traditional motifs that appeared on the thob.

There are a number of different types of Palestinian embroidery.  It tends to differ according to district.  Bethelehem embroidery is known for its couching and for stitches that are not found elsewhere for the most part.  Throughout most of the Palestine, the simple cross-stitch is used to create intricate, extraordinary thobs.  The satin stitch is used mainly by bedouin women to cover seams.  Usually, the seam covering is multi-coloured.  It was believed by the ancients that evil spirits could enter through any seams in a garment and thus, all seams were covered.  Certainly the seams are the weakest links in any garment.

I was studying the myth of Dionysos recently again and came upon the ancient dithyramb of Zeus.  Dionysos was sewn into the god's thigh to be reborn and the poetry is a cry:  Open the seam!  Open the seam!' to allow the God to be reborn.

This is all by the by, but it is one example of the seam in ancient myth.  If a god can be born by opening a seam, spirits certainly could make their entrances and exits in like fashion.

I did attempt to cover my seams with the traditional multi-coloured satin stitch of the bedouin but although it is simple, it is very time-consuming and I never completed the task.  A thob can stand with incomplete embroidery, however.  I have seen many a thob now with panels only half-embroidered or where a square of new embroidery has been added to cover a spot where another project never had been finished.

In Palestine, as in the rest of the Arab Nation, many thobs are made by machine and machine embroidery is common.  They can be quite lovely but for me, nothing takes the place of the hand-embroidery.  Traditionally, in a land before television or even electricity, the women would gather after returning from the fields and finishing the cooking and serving of the evening meal to embroider.  A girl might make her wedding trousseau and the project might take years.

Even now, there are cultures where fabric still is a common gift instead of manufactured clothing.  I knew a number of Muslim families who would receive gifts of fabric from 'home' for the Eids.  They would make their own outfits or outfits for their daughters rather than buying clothing from a shop.