SOHIGIAN+MAGARIAN FAMILY ARCHIVE

Beginning in 2018 Deborah Valoma embarked on an ongoing project to collect and archive materials from her mother's Armenian family, including photographs, written materials, and more than one hundred Armenian textiles. Inherited from her grandmother Sara Sohigian Magarian, the textile collection includes examples of weaving, sewing, embroidery, cutwork, crochet, knitting, tatting, bobbin lace, and perhaps most importantly, Armenian needle-lace. Some are notated with makers’ names, creating a network of shared materiality between women in the extended family. The oldest, dating back more than one hundred and twenty years were made in Ottoman Armenia before exile without attribution; others made in the diaspora.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION