Introduction

As early as in the Phoenician period, the Mediterranean has been one of the most dynamic spheres of the production and trade of fibres, dyes, and fabrics in the world. Exploring the creative and material processes underlying the design and the making of clothing and textiles in North African coastal cities sheds new light on the still largely neglected study of the everyday life of communities overshadowed by the belligerent events of a predominantly male-centred conventional history. This chapter examines seventeenth- till early nineteenth-century embroidery to present a thus far unknown material and gendered history of vernacular cosmopolitanism and in-between hybridity shaped by the women of early modern Algiers. Based on the analysis of textiles surviving in Algerian and French collections, as well as on ethnographic inquiries with female embroiderers in Algeria, this essay provides an anthropological recontextualisation of a multivalent gendered form of vernacular art in early modern North Africa.

The Objectification of Gendered Histories

For centuries, Algerian tarz or tiraz embroidery embodied a quintessential expression of individual and collective identity for both rural and urban female populations. Women of all generations, who worked autonomously and never belonged to any kind of professional corporation, produced silk thread embroideries in domestic settings. These women transformed the empty undyed surfaces of a broad variety of bath wear, underwear, bedwear, curtains, hangings, and other everyday and ritual articles. Professional female embroiderers existed in Algiers and could be commissioned embroidery artefacts by wealthy families; however, the production of most of the embroidery usually happened at home. It was not meant to constitute a commercial activity, but embroidering could generate consistent incomes to women. Whether made to satisfy their personal and family needs or as commissioned work, embroidery provided conditions of self-expression and self-realisation to women in every social category.