Jan Yoors was a writer, photographer, painter, and sculptor but is creatively most known as a master tapestry artist. He was born into a liberal and creative family in Antwerp, Belgium. His unusual path began early when, at the age of twelve, he ran off with a gypsy tribe and lived with them on and off for the next ten years. During World War II, Yoors worked with the Allies to help the Roma who were targeted for exterminated. He was captured twice and imprisoned until the end of the war. He wrote several books about his life experiences among them The Gypsies and Crossing. He spent twenty years working in multiple media in New York before his life was cut short. Yoors died at the age of fifty-five of complications from diabetes.