It’s rather delightful to square International Folk Art Market Placement Committee and Board member, and former International Folk Art Alliance Advisory and Museum of New Mexico Foundation Board member Suzzane Sugg with the Oklahoman child who sewed for 4-H club competitions at state and county fairs. Her mom also sewed and collected remnant fabrics, and as hobbyists they made their own clothes, sometimes reworking existing patterns. Years ago, Suzanne also owned a needlepoint and knit shop, and has designed everything from handbags to interiors. And early on she collected dolls from around the world, each piquing her interest in travel beyond her Midwest homestead. Clearly, these origin stories groomed Suzanne to value textiles, the absolute queen of her many collections.
Suzanne Sugg Textile Collector
“It’s all connected,” she says, but the textile tipping point was inheriting part of her husband Joel’s aunt’s textiles collection in the late 1980s. The aunt had traveled the Silk Road in the 1920s collecting reams of textiles. “She was interested in everything!” says Suzanne. (Spoiler: There’s a remarkable similarity between the two of them in that regard!) Collecting was not necessarily new to Suzanne and Joel as they loved and accumulated other collections—European antiques and fabrics, American illustrations, and since, Mexican Tlaquepaque and Spanish Majolica pottery, and Chinese children’s hats. But the Silk Road textiles were a welcome base upon which to build. A Museum Foundation trip was her first chance to do that.
Not long after Uzbekistan became independent of the Soviet Union, artists were reasserting their unique culture and seeking older artisans who could still dye, weave, and create heritage textiles. Fatullo Kendjaev, a rug maker and entrepreneur Suzanne met, studied the details of old paintings that included rugs to recall patterns formerly used in Uzbek textiles. She bought from him and stayed in touch. Today, he is an IFAM veteran.
Touring Suzanne’s home, we stop at a needlepoint rug made by an Uzbek woman named Gulnora Odilova. Suzanne had purchased some of the artist’s pillows at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul and later purchased this rug at the International Folk Art Market. Suzanne surmises that the piece could easily have been a year in the making, with several people at work on it simultaneously, each within their own specialty of hand dyeing the yarn, embroidering, and finishing.
Other parts of the world where Suzanne has pursued artists and textiles include Kyrgyzstan, South America, the Philippines, Morocco, Turkey, and India. Each year, she and her International Folk Art Market colleagues encourage promising artists to apply to the Market. Even on personal trips, she can’t help but work. In fact, after meeting artist Patricia Cheesman through an indigo-dyeing workshop in Chiang Mai, Suzanne encouraged her to apply. “She has artists working in the hills on their traditional designs and weaving methods and is helping them to move these pieces into the world and create an economy.”
Suzanne is surrounded by these stories and will continue to gather more, fueled by her voracious appetite for culture and artistry. She may have even hooked her granddaughter, who’s considering volunteering again at the Market this year. Thinking far ahead, Suzanne says the Museum of International Folk Art is interested in her textiles collection and it would be a perfect destination, though nothing is definite.
Story by Cullen Curtiss
Principal Photography by Tira Howard
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