BOOKHOUSE

Bookhouse is an intimate space located at the American Sephardi Federation and inhabited by Centro Primo Levi, Dan Wyman Books, the Jewish Book Art Collective, the Textiles and Carpets Workshop, and the Music Room. Like an old-fashioned bookstore, it offers readings and talks, coffee and tea, and a curated selection of books on the pre-nation-state era, Ottoman history, and culture. Come visit, suggest new titles, inquire about our inventory.

TEXTILES & CARPETS

The Workshop welcomes scholars, practitioners, collectors, and amateurs who work with and on textile, embroidery, and carpets.

The First Textile …

Michael Fulgencio

The textile I have chosen for one of my favorite textiles is one donated and belonging in the Lenore Hazan Levy collection and its origins could be from Castoria, Rhodes and or Salonika. This textile is one of the first ones Naila, Elya, and I encountered, and I was blown away by the beauty of this piece. The bright colors and such interesting drawn thread work design on the edge, despite the age, presented it was incredible.

The geometric design going down the middle was striking but also had a very elegant pattern. This piece made me think more about the possible pieces we may encounter throughout this project. This is the first Textile we encountered with drawn thread work, its when the embroiderer creates an opening in order to weave threads back together to create openings and decorative panels. This piece made us question: What’s the difficulty of this skill? What skill level is this embroiderer? This piece unlocked many questions that I had for many of the future pieces because of the impressiveness of the design and the drawn thread work surrounding the piece. This made me think about the possibilities of a textile such as this living in my own home or the textiles that live in the home of my grandmothers and other extended families. This strengthened my drive to preserve and take care of these textiles; seeing the relation it has to other families draws a personal connection to mine.

The project we have been working on at the Primo Levi Center connected me to this textile as well as many others like it; some of the textiles in this collection carry stories about the people and families that donated them. We had the privilege of working with Elya to understand this collection as it was given and give it the attention it deserved, cataloging and putting them within proper boxes. By the end of the project, we cataloged and boxed over 120+ items, pulling all sorts of names and information that can open up the possibilities of new projects across boxes, linking different cultures and ideas. The experience I’ve had working on this project at the Primo Levi Center strengthened my conservation and analytical skills, learning deeply about the nuances of textile conservation such as different types of fabrics and materials as well as stitching and threads.

The Ottoman Catalogue is a curated section of our Bookstore featuring English-language classics and new scholarship on Ottoman history and culture. It explores the impact of nationalism on the Ottoman Empire, the consequences of its decline and dissolution for Europe, and the histories of peoples, lands, religions, and their books before the concept of “the Middle East” emerged as a political and geographical term.

Following two decades of research, programming, and publishing on the history of nationalism, Fascism, Nazism, and Communism, Centro Primo Levi moved its attention to the period before 1922, exploring the stories, ideas, exchanges, and transformations that occurred over six centuries of Ottoman rule.

The era that ushered in the rise of the workers movement, totalitarianiasm, the Spanish Civil War, the fall of three empires, the shaping of modern nation-states, and the establishment of an economy based on industrial and scientific growth, banking, and warfare, also brought to an end cultures, concepts of time, language, and rituals that today’s observers often struggle to appreciate.

Much of this history has attracted modest attention from American and English-language scholarship. However, over the past few years, there has been an increase in original and translated research and publications, showcasing this period from various angles and perspectives. As the “Middle East” storms into our societies, challenging the vocabulary of public life, as well as its ethical and epistemological paradigms, we feel that attempting to move our gaze back into this past may help us refine our sensibility and interpretational tools.