Dear Piecework magazine, that’s an obergi/charm

 Dear Piecework,

That’s a lovely obergi on the cover of your latest issue.  It’s a magic charm.  Obergi is a Russian word for charm, amulet...

All the decorative art from Europe is loaded with charms.

You have been publishing charms for many years without identifying them.  I can’t find an art history teacher nor book that can identify the charms.  I know only 2 people in the world who see it my way and they probably think I’m crazy.  But their names are Patricia Robin Woodruff and Elizabeth Wayland Barber.

I’m saying that all handmade objects were once magical.  The amulets were woven in during the making.  But it seems that art history was written by people who could not discuss paganism.  Anyway, that sampler on your cover is a picture of the Mother of All.  She bring abundance to the person who has the sampler.  Most samplers have a charm -or layers of charms.  And any time you see a vase of flowers in European art, you should compare it to a Grain Goddess obergi - usually they match perfectly.  The vase symbolizes a full womb with goodness overflowing toward the person looking at it. And the plant or flower is the Berginia, a Russian word for Grain Goddess, Mother of All.

There was a book in the 1980’s that looked at Russian art this way. [ I can’t remember] the author, Mary B. Kelley, [ somebody,] very beloved, her out of print books are now very expensive.  I think the title of her first book was Goddess Embroideries of Russia.

Thanks for listening.  No, I don’t write much, and I’m nobody - just an amateur.

-Virginia Miller

172 Puckerbrush Road, Campton, NH, USA

guzel36@yahoo.com