Lily Vorperian | |
|---|---|
 Vorperian in 1994 | |
| Born | 1919 |
| Awards | National Heritage Fellowship (1994) |
Lily Vorperian (born 1919) is a Syrian-born Armenian American embroiderer known for her work in Marash-style embroidery, for which she was given a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts in the 1990s.
Vorperian first learnt embroidery when she was twelve [1] from older women in the Armenian refugee community [2] either who worked at the textile factory her parents ran in Syria [3] or came to her house to receive aid distributed from her parent's home. [1] They taught her eighteen different styles of regional embroidery, [2] but Kambourian took to the Marash style "because it was the hardest". [1] She carried on embroidering in her adult life and after her move to the United States. In 1986, took part in a folk arts program in Los Angeles. [4] Her work began to be featured in several exhibits in the California area, [3] and she was given a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1994. [1]
Vorperian's work included traditional Armenian designs such as khachkars [1] [5] flowers, geometric designs, the Armenian alphabet, [6] and lines from Armenian poetry. A re-occurring theme of her later pieces was the Armenian genocide and people. [1] She embroidered for seven to eight hours each day, [4] with the remaining hours going towards planning new designs. [6] A 1995 review of Vorperian's embroidery in The Los Angeles Times noted the complexity of her work and said that to call her an embroiderer was akin to "calling Coco Chanel a dressmaker". [4] She refused to sell her designs, preferring instead to keep the majority of her work and occasionally loan individual pieces to museums, [4] though om 1990 she embroidered a copy of the logo of the Armenian Relief Society for the organization to display. [7] [8]
In 1995, Vorperian's art was put on display alongside two other Armenian artists at the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art and Science. The exhibit was called "In Silver and Threads: Patterns of Armenian Tradition" and was sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Armenian National Committee of America, and the Armenian Studies program at California State University. [9] [10]
In 2022, her son, Hratch Vorperian, published a book dedicated to her embroidery. [11]
Born Lily Kambourian in Aleppo, Syria, [1] she was the youngest of three children in an Armenian family [3] from Marash. [1] Her mother, Zekia, had spent time in Germany and worked as a translator for the German military in Turkey, and her father, Haroutioun Kambourian, was a textile merchant. [3] They survived the Armenian genocide, [6] [1] fleeing Turkey for Syria a few years before their youngest daughter's birth. [2] Kambourian grew up in an Armenian refugee community [2] in Aleppo. [1] She married a local businessman, Haroutioun Vorperian, in 1937. [1] The couple had four children, including Rita Vorperian. [12] [13] Haroutioun died in 1953, and Lily Vorperian was forced to sell her belongings to look after their children. [1]
Vorperian moved to Beirut in 1964, but was forced to move to the United States in 1978 [1] due to the Lebanese Civil War. [3] She eventually settled in Glendale, California. [4]