{"id":17701,"date":"2025-11-13T18:27:02","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T18:27:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/enamonotfp.com\/?p=17701"},"modified":"2025-11-17T19:36:41","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T19:36:41","slug":"kilimia-chalia-kouvertes-yfanta-danteles-kai-alles-istories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/enamono.com\/en\/kilimia-chalia-kouvertes-yfanta-danteles-kai-alles-istories\/","title":{"rendered":"Kilims, rugs, blankets, woven fabrics, lace and other stories"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The journey to Skyros was long, back in the \u201970s. We had to cross Evia island on narrow roads to reach Kymi and then catch the boat to the island. Very few visited the island, especially in winter. We traveled together with our neighboors Venus and Theodore , because he was an architect freshly arrived from Paris and was building a house on the island for a French woman. All of us squeezed into my father\u2019s car. A cassette with Greek songs\u2014always the same one, on repeat.\n\nIt was a great adventure that ended at Kyra Kali\u2019s house, an incredible, colorful universe. A stone house with traditional wooden structures inside: downstairs the living room with Skyrian carved wooden furniture, the fireplace, stone-built couches that doubled as beds; at the back a small kitchen, and next to it a wooden staircase\u2014well, not really a staircase, just three or four steps\u2014that led up to the sfas.\n\nThe sfas was essentially a wooden loft overlooking the living room, with an intricately carved wooden divider separating the rooms. The floor was covered with colorful loom-woven kilims; the walls decorated with plates, jugs, copperware; the bedding was handwoven or woolen\u2014scratchy and not to my liking at all\u2014and the blankets were heavy but beautiful, full of colors and patterns.\n\nIn this tucked-away, wooden, colorful, low-ceilinged world lies, I suppose, the starting point of my love for all kinds of handmade embroidery\u2014everything falls under \u201cembroidery\u201d for me. I know there are many categories, but that\u2019s what I call them: embroidery.\n\nI remember Kyra Kali taking me down to the basement where the loom was, and I would stare at the woolen balls of yarn in bright colors. What a world!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo: Sorensen, Clarence Woodrow - Harris, Eugene V.\/University of Wisconsin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Photo: Sorensen, Clarence Woodrow - Harris, Eugene V.\/University of Wisconsin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

This is the world that wells up inside me whenever I see blankets, crib bumpers, woven cloths, kilims\u2026 I imagine the women weaving alone with their thoughts, counting, handling the weft, tracing and copying the pattern\u2014birds, hares and kings, peacocks and little figures with woolen caps. I picture them in pairs spinning wool, laughing at half-whispered secret jokes about the boys who made their cheeks blush; washing the wool in copper pots, dyeing it with walnut husks, eating a rusk or an olive.\n\nThese are the women I see before me\u2014from Thrace down to Crete, from Naxos to Mytilene, Lefkada and Skopelos\u2014spinning, embroidering, weaving in cold and in warmth, creating blankets, cloths, bridal linens, ensuring the family had what it needed, and sometimes so that she might hold a special place as a golden-handed craftswoman, a housewife known by name.\n\nIn every piece of embroidery, I think I\u2019m searching for that name lost in oblivion; I\u2019m looking to give a name, to remember an Argyro, an Eleni\u2014or better yet, Vangelis\u2019 Lenio, whose fingers were slender like stems and who worked cutwork embroidery like no one else. Her linen curtains still flutter in the breeze, together with Maritsa\u2019s towels, hanging at the sides of the washstand beneath the mirror that greets you with a \u201cgood morning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sounds rise up, and scents, and laughter, and tears, and nights lit by the lamp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not that the past seems romantic\u2014because it wasn\u2019t. It was hard, cold, hungry, and heavy. But it had a human breath to it, something I miss so deeply in our times. And so\u2014how else can I say it?\u2014if we are all to vanish into the universe as though we never existed, then by gathering all these fragments I want to proclaim that I saw you, daughters; I heard you; I danced with you at your weddings; I stole a sip of tsipouro with you; and I lay down on your beddings, which are as beautiful as you yourselves once were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The journey to Skyros was long in those years of the 70's, we had to cross Evia for<\/p>","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":17704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/enamono.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/enamono.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/enamono.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enamono.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enamono.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17701"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/enamono.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17786,"href":"https:\/\/enamono.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17701\/revisions\/17786"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enamono.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/enamono.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enamono.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enamono.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}