On the main street of Haddonfield, New Jersey, there's an unusual little shop full of whimsical items celebrating Anatolian art and culture.

The shop belongs to Ylvia Asal, who is herself from Anatolia.

Asal: Anatolia is Turkey, and Anatolia is a Greek name.

Narrator: The Greeks looked east to Anatolia.

They called it the place where the sun is born.

It's now home to modern-day Turkey.

Ylvia grew up in an Anatolian Greek family in the city of Giresun on the Black Sea.

It's where she learned how to make traditional Turkish lace or oya.

Asal: My grandmother, she was very good at it.

So many different technique making the oya.

I interested to learn from her and I started with her when I was a little girl, maybe 10, 12 years old.

Narrator: Oya lace is made with a needle and very fine thread.

Asal: It could be polyester and silk and cotton, metallic thread also.

And also we have with the beads.

Narrator: Oya is used for trimming on traditional headscarves.

It's colorful and often three-dimensional, sometimes in the shapes of flowers or fruit.

For centuries it's been a way for women to express themselves.

Now Ylvia is taking this craft in new directions.

Asal: Everybody made in the past something different.

And then it's coming to today.

It's like turned to my style now.

Narrator: Ylvia has a complicated relationship with her Turkish past.

As Anatolian Greeks, her family was Christian.

In the early 20th century, Turks massacred and deported Christians, including Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, in what is now called the Armenian Genocide.

Her grandfather was the only one in the family to survive and remain in Turkey.

Asal: My grandfather, he survived.

We come from him in Turkey with all his family gone.

Dead.

Narrator: Oya is Ylvia's way of reclaiming her past.

It's why she now shares this ancient Anatolian craft with others.

Asal: And this hand holds needle.

Pionegro-Smith: I think anything that gives you a connection to the past, to another time and another place, it's magical.

Asal: I don't want to lose that culture.

But the most important things, I don't want to lost myself.

It's something inside of me.