August 2022
While traveling with her husband and two young sons in 2005, Maren Beck fell in love with rural Southeast Asian textiles and cultures, and transitioned from being a project manager in the health care field to being a businessperson importing personally selected handcrafted traditional textiles from Laos and Vietnam. She and her husband, Josh Hirschstein, founded Above the Fray: Traditional Hill Tribe Art in 2007 in order to document, support, and introduce to the world the incredible traditional textiles arts and cultures of this region.
Maren and Josh are authors of Silk Weavers of Hill Tribe Laos, published by Thrums Books. They live in Eugene, Oregon, and Maren leads village textile workshop tours to Laos and Vietnam. Maren is a member of the WARP board of directors, and leads the Artisan Grants Program and the WARP Business Networking Group.
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