The nineteenth-century Armenian home featured an abundance of laces and embroidered textiles, especially during weddings and feasts, when families displayed their finest works. Needlework was one of the few forms of expression open to women in a society where they were largely without rights or prestige. It constituted a “voice”: stitches, instead of words, became a language. It also provided subsistence in hard times; women could sell their needlework for income, calling it “bread of the black days.”