Sitting and sewing as their foremothers have for generations, a thousand women form small groups in Bengal, creating exquisite needlework to last many lifetimes. The Self Help Enterprise, known as SHE Kantha, employs these talented female embroiderers who turn out pure silk tableaux, by hand, like those featured here in our window display. In this eastern part of the subcontinent, artists practice the ancient Bengali Kantha stitching technique, using the finest needles and the most precise running stitches. The women share skills, stories, and sisterhood as they create these vignettes. Finished pieces offer a mesmerizing mix of intricate scenes bringing the countryside to life: how people work (almost all women depicted!), grow crops and raise animals, throw weddings (lavishly), school children...all in vivid color. Their gods and goddesses inspire some designs; and geometrics, others. Their billowy tableaux are prized by prominent collectors worldwide, Hillary Clinton among them. Sales support their families and their communities in a region rich in creativity, and dirt poor, materially. Providing the very basics, including clean water in artists’ villages, is SHE’s top priority for reinvesting profits.