Anna Apinis teaching weaving, 1948
Anna Apinis taught weaving while at Memmingen Displaced Persons Camp in Germany. She had a loom constructed for her by fellow internees at the camp, with wood scavenged from bombed-out ruins; Anna’s husband Ervins used his engineering skills to draw plans of the loom. Anna painstakingly sketched and documented ancient Latvian designs from the regional costumes rescued by other Latvian refugee women. She then wove them on her loom with threads gathered by unravelling old scraps of fabric.