If a diplomatic life means constantly moving and upending your routines, then Jenny Bowker has bucked the trend. The wife of Australian Ambassador to Egypt Robert Bowker is an expert quilt-maker, teacher and proponent of patchwork who has taken her quilting to every post in the Middle East.
She has been inspired by Damascene street scenes and Palestinian dresses, taking her quilting to the rotation of cities she has called home. She gave quilting classes in Jerusalem and Ramallah. For the past two years, she came to know and sponsor Cairo tentmakers in Khan Al-Khayamiyya.
“For traveling wives, it can be extremely difficult. When you come overseas, suddenly you’re just the ambassador’s wife, Bowker said as she sat in the living room of her diplomatic residence. The walls throughout the house are adorned with her quilts, some featuring traditional Islamic patterns, others depicting scenes of Egypt or Syria.
“You have to reshape the facets of your life to fuel your own work and interests wherever you are, she said.
With a background in science, Bowker went back to school at the age of 45 to study art, obtaining a B.A. in Visual Arts from the Australian National University in 1997. Since then, she has created 163 quilts. One Islamic-patterned quilt was made in Ramallah during a teaching session with Palestinian women. “Arabesque is a large piece showing a typical scene from the Old City in Damascus, with a series of low archways framing a shoe repairman sitting against a wall.
The latter is her family’s favorite, she says. Her husband and four children forbid her from selling it, even when one Kuwaiti businessman offered a lump sum, which he promptly doubled when Bowker said it was not for sale.
For the class she taught in Ramallah, Bowker reintroduced local patterns to Palestinian quilting, which since the Mandate period, had been largely influenced by European, particularly German patterns.
“I remember feeling that they had lost their own clear Palestinian patterning because something else had gotten in, she said.
Bowker took traditional cross stitch patterns from Palestinian dresses she had bought in Jordan and applied them to the quilting. She wanted to teach her students in Ramallah how to “use their own local elements and patterns.
Bowker quilts by machine, stitching together the three layers of fabric and cotton. She offered a wealth of knowledge on the history of quilting and patchwork as well as the busy and competitive world of quilting conferences and competitions. Bowker travels the globe regularly to attend shows and conferences, but more so to teach.
Her teaching is global and her list of recent and upcoming locations, for classes and conferences, sounded like a diplomat’s schedule: Australia, Brazil, Spain, Turkey, Kuwait, Dubai, France, England, and the US.
Cairo has given Bowker new inspiration as well as a new community – the tentmakers – with whom Bowker can share her craft while learning about their specialized appliqué work, khayamiyya.
“One thing that drew me to quilting was Islamic patterning, Bowker said while describing her time in Jerusalem in the mid-90s. “In fact, that’s been one of my biggest influences, this patterning that is really the most beautiful in the world.
“Having the career I have now, it can come with me – to create an identity for me independent from Bob, she said. “And the tentmakers have become a part of that.
