Yerevan Zoo approached Homeland Handicrafts ten days ago and asked if we could supply goods to a Yerevan Zoo shop at the Marriott Hotel.  Because the profits from the shop are to go towards the construction of a new spacious enclosure for large cats, they wanted products with the lion and tiger theme.  Quite the challenge at such short notice!   Yet on September 5th the shop quietly opened with tiger and lion magnets from the House of Hope and Faith in Kapan and lion key tags from the Goris Womens Resource Center.  In addition, there is a large selection of other Homeland Handicraft items like our classic Berd teddy bears, wooden pegboards from Goris, and much more.  Have a look in the shop, support the big cats!  Pictures of the shop can be seen on the Homeland Handicrafts page on Facebook.

A few months ago, a Peace Corps Volunteer encouraged Homeland Handicrafts to make a visit to Berd, the city on the other side of the mountain at the end of the road in outer Tavush Province, some nine kilometers from the Azerbaijani border.  Little did I know that we were about to embark on one of the biggest handicraft adventures in our history.  At the first meeting, the ladies in Berd showed me a teddy bear- a gorgeous teddy bear of very high quality.  This was the start of what is fast becoming a project that we can 'bearly' keep up with.  The orders are steadily trickling in!  For us, the joy is not only the fact that these are fabulous bears, but that we are providing work to several women in Berd who have not earned a penny of their own in ten years.  They lived off of pensions, sons and husbands working in Russia, and their vegetables gardens.  They are so proud that they are earning their own money now.  Our hats go off to Anahit and John up in Berd who are the driving forces behind the Berd Womens Resource Center Foundation, whose members produce the bears.  Please contact us if you want more information, or would like to support Homeland Handicrafts or the Berd Womens Resource Center Foundation.

When Homeland Handicrafts visited Vayk, Getap and Artaboynk in Vayots Dzor a few months ago, we were surprised by such a rich tradition of high quality embroidery in these small villages. Middle men representing buyers from abroad were paying them pittance to do long hours of intricate embroidery work, they said, so we decided to take the technique and put it on a different product that could be sold at a lower price in the market. With a 20 cm x 20 cm swatch of embroidery taking some 17 hours of eye-straining work to make, these are still not cheap items. But the quality of them makes them worth every dram. Give these women a break, give your sofa or bed a splash of luxury.

Homeland Handicrafts is an entirely voluntary organisation dedicated to creating jobs through the development of a new generation of Armenian handicrafts using traditional materials and techniques. The focus will be on women in rural areas.