Living history
An old stone house in Paphos also hosts a fascinating museum giving an insight into how Cypriot’s used to live
The word ethnographic refers to a branch of anthropology dealing with the scientific description of specific human cultures. If I was a regular tourist, here for my two week’s sun, sand and souvla, I would have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the Paphos Ethnographical Museum, believing it to host a dire, mind numbing collection of glass boxes stuffed with arrowheads and dodgy fossils. Sadly, this is the public’s perceived image of what is an absolute gem of a place set in the old town, a few metres from the Paphos Bishopric.
This museum is, first of all, a wonderful example of urban architecture, built in 1894 by brothers Efthyvoulos and Evryviades Antoniades. They were rich merchants and flaunted their wealth by constructing a lavish, two-storey stone house with a fa?ade covered by three gothic arches to form a covered rectangular verandah. The museum is made up of five rooms in total, with a huge, high, T-shaped hallway setting the scene for visitors after they have entered through a set of imposing iron gates. It’s obvious what’s inside is not your usual run of the mill museum, where hallowed halls promote banal depersonalised exhibits – this place is very much alive, making visitors revel in the private wonders that are to be found there.
Chryso is the widow of GS Eliades, the man responsible for making this homage to the art, ingenuity and wisdom of the Cypriot people and it is she who still resides here, in the house that has been in her family for over 300 years.
But how does she cope with strangers traipsing through it on a daily basis, as this living museum is also her home. “First of all, I love meeting people and even more so since my husband passed away. I get up in the morning and you never know who might be coming through the front door, Germans, Americans, Japanese, it’s lovely that through a visit to my house I can introduce visitors to our culture in a more human, a more natural way. We use all the rooms in the house as a family, so people can see for themselves how we live now, and downstairs they will see how we used to live.
“My husband was a professor and I was one of his students. We fell in love and married, he was 21 years older than me and when we moved into the house he was able to really seriously start his study and collection of artifacts and archeological pieces. Then, in 1958 we opened the museum to the public, when it was called the museum of folk art, but the name changed in 1970, and, I agree it’s not the right name for these times as most people don’t fully understand what is to be found here, and how fascinating it all is regardless of their education and culture”.
Each of the rooms boasts wonderful high ceilings and cool interiors. The dining room has a strong Victoriana feel to it, with marvelous standing lamps, heavy brocades, Rocco chairs and, standing pride of place, a magnificent shiny black upright piano with ebony keys. “This piano,” Chryso says, “is over 200 years old. I play it regularly as do some students and it has never needed to be tuned”. Moving into the professor’s study, the room is stuffed with books, prints and pictures while a huge brass Arabic coffee set sits to the side of the comfortable sofa. Everywhere you look there’s row upon row of classical books, art studies, maps, glass ware and dozens of mementoes although there is no standout piece for Chryso. “Everything here has a memory, a meaning and an importance, I do love the Napoleon mirror and some of the hand crafted silver jewellery but everything is a treasure to me and my family”.
It’s in the downstairs courtyard area where visitors really get an insight into the way Cypriots lived and worked up until only a few decades ago. Fryne, Chryso’s daughter, has, like her father, inherited a passion for the past. “The family has a commitment to keeping this museum open. It was my father’s life long work and as we get no grants from the government we have to try to have ideas about how to raise much needed money to keep it going. This year, for example, we have secured the license to hold civil marriages in the courtyard area near the carved out tomb and mini chapel, so the service and the wedding reception can be held here”.
It is easy to see why Fryne is so excited by the prospect of hosting wedding parties; the setting is perfect for the purpose – it’s private yet bursting with character, there is also the Christian element in that the tomb discovered here was probably a place of refuge for those fleeing persecution, so lashings of history also surround this courtyard.
In the covered area of the courtyard a series of rooms once used by servants have been given over to recreate living conditions in the nineteenth century. A bridal chamber with an old iron bed laid with Lefkara lace topped sheets; hanging from the wall, samples of the clothes the family would have worn for work and special occasions.
There’s also a somewhat primitive ‘fully fitted’ kitchen, a room dedicated to the art of weaving, and everywhere you turn there are examples of agricultural tools, hand-made pottery and fascinating archeological finds.
This is a truly marvelous place to spend a morning, a fascinating experience frozen in time but, as we all know, the past and present live through us: not us through them, and the hope for the museum is that the sandal-clad feet of tourists will now happily step over their threshold. And for those who have adopted Cyprus as their new home a visit to this charming living museum to understand the past should be made compulsory.
For more information contact Fryne on Tel: 26 944833 or 99 413244, Fax 26 948478. Email [email protected]
Traditional clothes tell a story
It isn’t just lifestyles that have changed radically in Cyprus over the last one hundred years, fashions have too. back then, clothing included simple cottons and silks with little variation from village to village. The outer garments were made from alatzia, a durable cotton cloth like ticking, usually with fine vertical or crossed stripes in deep red, blue, yellow, orange or green on a beige background. The Cypriot female costume was an outer garment, the chemise, which was worn with distinctive long pantaloons caught around the ankle. Men wore pleated baggy trousers, called a vraka, a waistcoat and jacket.
Although these clothes are familiar to most peopel through old photographs, one Nicosia woman has researched the subject and even makes traditional costumes.
“No matter who you were in the 1800s, if you were a woman, you knew how to sew and weave,” says Julia Astreou Christoforou. “It was something that was taught to women at a very young age.” By the age of 10, most girls, especially those who were born into poor families that resided in villages, were taught how to make their own clothes, and those for their menfolk. “They had to know how to sew their man’s garments, of course.” And in the area of her Kaimakli workshop, Julia explains that there were a few houses that had more than one loom under the roof. “One for the grandmother, another for the mother and another for the granddaughter,” she explains. “It was a way of life.”
Although lower class women dressed differently to the upper class ladies of the time, it wasn’t just because of expense. “There was a lot more detail sewn into the clothes of richer women,” says Julia. “They had more time to spend on creating and beautifying a garment and also because they used much finer, more expensive materials.” The women of the lower classes, however, had to work. “Unlike the rich society girls of that time, who did very little throughout their lives, the poor had work to do, mainly agricultural, helping their husbands and trying to make ends meet.” During the winter was when women of the lower class would weave more, simply because they were not required in the fields for gathering.
One of the most important aspects, however, of the art of weaving is the inspirations the women would take from everyday situations. “Although it was not common to do so, because tradition is conservative and many didn’t want to steer away, various names of weaving styles have stemmed from things women would see and incorporate into their sewing,” says Julia. For instance, there’s a type called ‘Teacher’s shoes’, which was a series of criss crosses and this, Julia explains, must have originated from a teacher’s visit to a certain village, where a weaver must have picked up on the laces design. It is also believed that certain designs were only used in certain areas of Cyprus, such as the Fidiotiko, which originated from Fidi, a village in Paphos and is very popular to this day with the Lefkara lace.
Even though the designs were mostly used around the ankle part of the pantaloons and on aprons the women wore (men’s clothing was more basic), the weavers and seamstresses of that age also incorporated the designs onto bed spreads, tablecloths and kitchen towels. “They made all these things therefore used the same designs on everything,” Julia explains. Even the pictures Julia has of old clothing show some remarkable colours despite the fact that they date from the 19th century. “Well before chemical paints were brought in at the beginning of the century, people used natural resources such as cow’s blood and plants for colour,” said Julia. “Rose leaves gave a dark almost black colour and were used for the vrakes of men while a type of rice, produced a dark purple shade.”
Although it is almost impossible to know for sure what went on during the everyday lives of these people, so much information about the clothing is known due to extensive research and a collection called Kafiero. “The Kafiero Collection is named after Maria Kafiero, a woman who collected handmade folklore items such as clothing and jewellery, before Cyprus and items such as these were commercialised,” explains Julia. “They are priceless and depict perfectly everything we know about those days.” From the gold threading to the silk lining on skirts and jackets, the collection does indeed portray what magnificent skills Cypriot women possessed.
WHERE TO GO
Leventis Municipal Museum
With two floors of permanent exhibits documenting the island’s history. 17 Ippocratous St, Laiki Gitonia, Old Nicosia. Daily 10am-4.30pm. Closed Mondays. Tel: 22 661475
Cyprus Ethnographical and Folk Art Museum
Old Archbishopric Palace, Old Nicosia. Tel: 22 432578. 8.30am-3.30pm. Sundays closed.
Avgorou Pierides Foundation
Folk Art museum. Avgorou village. Tel: 23 922680
House of Patsalos
Lefkara museum of Folk Art, Embroidery and Silverwork. Lefkara village. Monday to Thursday 9.30am-4pm, Friday and Saturday 10am-4pm. Sunday closed. Free.
Paphos Ethnological Museum-Eliades Museum
Permanent exhibition of past living conditions in Cyprus. 1 Exovrisi Street, Paphos. Tel: 26 932010. Summer 9.30am-6pm, winter 10am-5pm. Saturday and Sunday: 10am-1pm. €3 per person
