Middle East, 1960 & 1961

On 3 June 1960 Margrethe Hald travelled to Syria for the first time, where she stayed at the Danish Hospital in the town of Nebk. From there she travelled around Syria and to Lebanon. The tubular loom had been observed in Palestine and Syria by Grace Growfoot some 20 years earlier, and Hald hoped to find the tradition still alive. The trip was followed by another one the following year, where she returned to a tent weaver, Michael Arbash in Yabroud, who taught her the warping technique and sold her a loom for weaving tent canvas, and she travelled to Jordan and Lebanon as well.

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Unfortunately most of Margrethe Hald's photographs from her travels in the Middle East are not in the collection in CTR's archive or in the National Archives of Denmark, and their whereabouts remain unknown. Some of them were included in Hald's articles, books and presentations and survive thus in printed form.