A Jewish artist in Madrid creates prayer shawls from local wool

On a still morning in Madrid, New Mexico, loose wool moves across Lena Adler’s studio table in shades of cream, rust and charcoal. It began as fleece from sheep raised within the state, but it will become a tallit, the four-cornered Jewish prayer shawl. The setting matters: this is devotional textile work rooted in a particular landscape, not a generic craft exercise.

Adler works with a small wooden loom, natural dyes and hand-spun yarn. She designs each shawl for use in morning prayer, on festivals or as a work of Jewish textile art. Her process links religious tradition to the economy, climate and material culture of New Mexico.

Madrid itself is better known as a former coal-mining town and a gateway to Santa Fe than as a centre of wool production. For Adler, “local” therefore means New Mexico rather than the immediate Madrid area. Fleece reaches her from small sheep operations elsewhere in the state, bringing the geography of ranching into a town known for galleries, studios and quiet residential streets.

Australian readers may recognise wool immediately, but the scale and purpose are different. Fleece from inland New South Wales or Victorian sheep stations often travels through established auction and export systems. Adler’s supply chain is shorter and more personal, shaped by direct relationships with a handful of growers. The resulting shawls sit between ritual object, regional product and collectible contemporary craft.

Local wool has a specific geography

Madrid’s industrial history began with coal, while much of New Mexico’s wool history is rooted in Hispanic sheep raising and long-established ranching traditions. Today, small flocks remain scattered across the state rather than concentrated around any one town. That geography gives each fleece an identity Adler can trace back to a particular ranch or valley.

Fleece quality changes with breed, grazing conditions and the season in which it is shorn. Some lots contain soft, fine fibres suited to a smooth shawl; others are coarser and more resilient. Adler selects wool by touch as much as by measurement, checking fibre length, colour and strength. She rejects material with excessive vegetable matter or signs of weakness, since a prayer shawl must survive years of folding, washing and wear.

Buying directly changes the relationship between maker and producer. Rather than purchasing an anonymous commodity, Adler can learn how a flock is managed and whether the wool reflects responsible land and animal care. She pays by weight, records the source of each lot and tells growers how their fibre appears in the finished work. Traceability is practical, but it also gives the final shawl a chain of custody that industrial production cannot offer.

A prayer shawl begins with ritual purpose

A tallit is more than a patterned rectangle. It is used during Jewish prayer, often at weekday morning services and on major festivals, and its four corners traditionally carry tzitzit, the ritual fringes. Many communities also use prayer shawls for settings that extend beyond the synagogue, including graveside ceremonies, family blessings and acts of remembrance.

Adler begins every design with use. She considers how the shawl will sit across the shoulders, whether its weight will remain comfortable in New Mexico’s dry heat or a cooler winter morning, and how the fabric will look after repeated washing. Artistry cannot come at the expense of the object’s sacred function. The proportions, corners and fringes need to feel deliberate rather than merely decorative.

Indigo and black stripes provide familiar visual references, but colour is never treated as a rigid rule. In some designs, the dark band comes from a botanical dye; in others, it is a narrow woven line that contrasts with undyed wool. Adler also makes editions in which the four corners shift subtly in colour, allowing the natural variation of the fleece to become part of the pattern.

Her Jewish identity informs the work without reducing it to a single symbol. The shawls explore how an inherited form can be made in a place with its own histories of migration, land use and handmade textiles. They are made for prayer, but they are also shaped by the rooms in which their owner lives and the communities that wear them.

From raw fleece to a finished tallit

Preparation begins with sorting, scouring and picking. Adler removes dust, seed fragments and residual grease, then separates usable fibre from coarse sections. The clean fleece is carded until its fibres align. Spinning follows, often on a traditional wheel, with the amount of twist adjusted according to whether the yarn will form a strong border or a softer central panel.

Before weaving, Adler makes small samples and records how each batch behaves on the loom. New wool often has a lively bounce, while a different batch may settle into a soft, fluid cloth. She weaves narrow panels with firm edges, then joins them to form the complete rectangle. Seams are designed to remain flat across the back, where a wearer’s shoulder or neck may rest.

The borders and corner areas receive extra reinforcement, often with denser yarn or a second layer of woven cloth. Adler then forms the tzitzit by twisting and knotting the fringe strands. Each piece is checked by hand for even length, secure knots and finished edges. Tiny irregularities remain, but they are treated as evidence of the material’s origin rather than faults to disguise.

New Mexico traditions shape the work

New Mexico has no single textile tradition, but it is a place where weaving carries deep cultural weight. Hispanic weavers in the Rio Grande region have worked with wool, churro sheep and locally transmitted patterns for generations. Diné weavers in and around the Four Corners have developed distinct systems of design, material and cultural meaning. Adler treats those traditions as separate and living, not as a generic backdrop for her own practice.

Her approach creates conversation rather than imitation. Local makers have shaped how she thinks about colour, repair and useful objects. The slow replacement of a worn seam, for example, can extend the life of a textile while recording the years it has served. That principle fits a tallit, an object intended to accompany a person through ordinary days and recurring prayers.

Adler also understands that worship is carried by more than cloth. A Columbia Reflections essay on music and the spirit considers how congregational songs reshape the emotional force of prayer. The connection is direct in Adler’s studio: a shawl may frame a service, while music fills the room, and both are forms of participation rather than decoration.

Reading the piece from an Australian market

Australian buyers encounter wool in many forms, from Merino garments to everyday blankets, but the commercial scale is quite different. The New England region of New South Wales and Victoria’s highlands sit within a vast wool economy, with fibre commonly moving through auction yards, brokers and large-scale exporters. A small quantity of traceable fleece can therefore travel a very short distance to an Australian studio.

Artisan buyers often meet makers at weekend markets in Melbourne and Adelaide or through Sydney-based online stores. A one-off might be described as a “small-batch piece” or simply “handmade”, terms that carry particular weight where large-scale production has long shaped the market. Australian shoppers are also accustomed to clear country-of-origin claims, wool-content labels and practical information about washing, mending and moth prevention.

The practical differences are clear side by side:

Feature	Madrid studio shawl	Frequently offered Australian option
Fibre	Traceable New Mexico wool, hand-spun	Mill-spun wool, silk or acrylic blends
Construction	Woven in small runs and hand-finished	Machine woven for repeated production
Colour	Natural fleece variation and small-batch dyeing	More uniform colour matching
Origin	Regional and ranch provenance is central	Often limited to maker and country
Care	Air, spot-clean and store against moths	Machine-washable options are common

Distance and climate affect ownership as well as price. A shawl shipped from Madrid to Australia must cross changing temperatures and undergo strict biosecurity checks for wool products. Australian summer humidity can also make storage more demanding, so Adler includes care instructions and insect-protection guidance. Local organisations planning a workshop or exhibition can place notices through New Mexico Jewish Link’s publication advertising page, while an Australian partner can cross-post details through maker-market channels.

A next chapter for the handmade shawl

Adler sees the Australian connection as more than an export opportunity. Comparable small workshops in Melbourne, Adelaide and regional wool districts already understand how to combine local fibre with practical design. Her interest lies in pairing New Mexico’s direct ranch relationships with Australian attention to repair, transparent labelling and low-waste production.

She is developing a small exchange with a Melbourne textile studio rather than planning a large commercial launch. The pieces would retain their New Mexico provenance while being examined for performance in Australian conditions. Documentation would include fleece source, dye records, dimensions and photographs of the weaving process, allowing buyers to understand both the labour and the origin of each shawl.

The next fixed step is a practical one: in November, Adler will send three shawls to Melbourne for fibre testing and a spring exhibition.