A room of my own

M A R A A M A T S

Used to restore frescoes until she decided restoring people was somewhat more valuable.

By this she meant giving people whose lives were as distinctive as the icons she worked on the chance to maintain their own ways. Her change of tack began when she discovered that the beggars hanging around the church where she was working in Addis Ababa had been embroiderers in Haile Selassie’s palace and that their only sources of work now were infrequent church commissions. She looked at their designs, advised how they could sell them more effectively and in years to come found herself working among the people in other parts of Africa as well as India and the Caribbean.

That is why her room in a small flat just off London’s Baker Street is filled with exotica – of which she herself could claim to be an example. She was born in Latvia, half-Russian on her mother’s side, and spent her childhood years in displaced persons’ camps before settling in France, where she was apprenticed to an icon master who trained her as a restorer. Her artistic sensitivity is balanced by a strong practical streak and her adventurous spirit sustains her in her travels to isolated and often dangerous parts of the world.

Her flat is in what began as a block of artisans’ dwellings, purpose built at the turn of the century, and mostly occupied then by glove-makers and other craftsmen: she believes three families lived in the fairly cramped space that is now her base whenever she is in London – ‘the navel of the world, the crossroads for all these other places’. She has worked on the development projects in poor countries in the belief that many of the textiles, pottery and sculpture such countries produce can sell in the West in their own right and not just on the guilt principle. ‘I start from the other end, designing products that can sell because they are the best in their price range.’ Financial help from the West often went down the plughole of grandiose bureaucratic enterprises. ‘One walks across the field or into that hut and there is seldom any of that aid visible, though billions are spent. Now I think we are beginning to have ideas and look at our methods.’

She went on contract from the Commonwealth Secretariat to the Caribean where the mechanization of banana-loading meant that the women who used to hump the bananas to the ships needed new jobs. She experimented with banana fibre and found it made rather fine paper. Then she went to Nepal, where people had been making paper since the eleventh century, using the bark from trees of the daphne family. The trees were never replanted, contributing to the 40 per cent loss of ground cover in the Himalayas. ‘I found a water hyacinth that makes splendid paper and now the people are producing it for several top British firms.’ She has also helped them market a species of black mushrooms that needs to be harvested, dried and sold within two months. She brought a sample back with her and now it is sold in the West End of London.

She herself is an artist and works in paper. On the left hangs a shirt she made out of water hyancinth paper and pheasant feathers, one of a series of symbolic representations she has constructed. On the wall to the right of the shells is a drawing on vellum from a Coptic bible by an Ethiopian artist, and near it carved figures from West Africa.

Tribal rugs from Persia and Anatolia add their colour and in front of the table with the skulls a set of saddle-bags originally used by yurt-dwellers in Kazakhstan find an alternative role on the floor. Mara has just spent several months in Kazakhstan advising craftspeople how to pick up the threads of their pre-Revolutionary skills, deliberately crushed in 70 years of ‘socialistic realism’. Their crafts were mummified, she says; instead of their symbolic patterns and native decorative arts they had to make busts of Lenin or representations of people driving tractors. ‘Many of these crafts survived only in the more remote areas where old people kept them going because of dowry customs and so on. The younger ones see them as living libraries of their past – please read them with us, they asked, so that we can earn our living through them again.’

1 exotica	6 there is very seldom any of that aid visible
A beautiful or exciting sounds B curious or rare art objects C strange customs	A we rarely see any concrete use made of the money donated B we often witness the money being put to inappropriate use C we are never given an opportunity to see how the money has been used
2 sustains her	7 an alternative role
A carries her weight B supports her financially C strengthens her morale	A another character to present B an optional part to play C a different purpose in life
3 fairly cramped space	8 to pick up the threads
A rather confined area B very uncomfortable quarters C quite limited scope	A to learn how to sew properly B to start where they left off C to repair damage done to
4 the navel of the world	9 deliberately crushed
A the dregs of civilization B the hub of the universe C the scourge of society	A purposely squeezed B prudently conquered C wiped out on purpose
5 went down the plughole of grandiose bureaucrati enterprises	10 mummified A shrivelled and dried up B respected and revered C forgotten and untalked of
A was siphoned off by important local officials B drained away on account of inappropriate business deals C disappeared in extravagant official ventures