Mehria drew parallels between the images of the blackhouses and her present-day kitchen store where they store teapot jugs, lanterns and steel boxes to store rice and flour. Mehria’s narrative emerged when she started to describe her everyday activities. These included washing the dishes; making chapatti and Lassi. Mehria’s mother and sisters would get up at crack of dawn, pray and then prepare to make traditional Chitrali bread. Her mother would recite a special prayer when kneading the dough and always started with Bismillah ( "In the name of God…”). This was to give Barakat (blessing), which brought positivity, health and wellbeing to the entire family.
Blackhouse in Lewis
The traditional motifs of the Chitrali rug carried reminiscences of her ancestors who moved through the highlands of Central Asia and East Turkistan. The garish colour arrangement embodied Mehria’s childlike imagination and wonder. As a result, the lines of threads in her artwork traced their idle chatter of domestic life, enmeshed with the woven threads of the Harris tweed, is an encountering of multiple places that Chitrali women inhabit.
