Created with activist and tatreez educator Samar as part of our Together Project, The Gathering Napkin honours land and people through the table.
This design carries four embroidered motifs: mulberry, Baker’s Wife, palm tree and pomegranate. Together, they speak to what brings people to the table: fruit, bread, shade, sweetness, labour, hospitality, memory and the rituals of feeding and being fed. They were chosen not simply as decoration, but as a way to open up conversations around the lives, landscapes and traditions that continue even when land, safety and access are interrupted.
The mulberry begins with Kashmir, where Tuell Kul was once woven into village life through silk work, shade, fruit and livelihood. It also speaks beyond one place, to Palestinian gardens, memory, gathering and tatreez, and to wider stories of agriculture and cultivation. The Baker’s Wife motif brings us back to bread, because so many tables begin there: bread made, bought, torn, dipped, shared and passed across plates. The palm tree (Nakhl) speaks to food, shade, sweetness and survival, holding the story of dates in Palestine and Sudan while also pointing to the wider trees and crops that feed communities across warm lands. The pomegranate is both everyday and ceremonial, appearing in kitchens, gardens, markets, plates, juices, salads and hands stained red from breaking it open.
Where The Harvest Napkin leans into what sustains the table, this design moves through what gathers people around it. It is about the fruit offered to guests, the bread that turns separate dishes into a meal, the trees that hold memory and livelihood, and the small rituals that make a table feel shared.
The Together Project began with the table, but quickly moved into agriculture, food traditions, craft and the stories so often left out when Palestinian, Kashmiri, Sudanese and Rohingya people are spoken about only through crisis, occupation, displacement, famine, war and loss. Those realities matter deeply, but they are not the whole story. Through these napkins, we wanted to hold space for what people continue to carry: food, skill, humour, beauty, inheritance, hospitality and the conversations that can lead to action.
Each napkin funds one hot meal for someone in need, because if this project begins at the table, it should help someone else reach one.
