Photos: Training opens 'a window of hope' for traditional Albanian rug-weavers

Albania as soon as had 13 former state-run factories that produced carpets, rugs, fez hats, folks costumes and different handicrafts. Kukes, a city northeast of the capital, Tirana, alone employed greater than 1,200 ladies as weavers. When the nation's communist period resulted in 1990, the native manufacturing facility closed. Hate Ora has been weaving carpets and rugs for greater than half a century, since studying the craft as a toddler by sneaking into her aunt's workshop. Ora, 64, is now educating the strategies she picked up and perfected to her daughter, nieces and different youthful ladies to make sure there's one other era of artisans to proceed the custom.