|
|||||||
| General information about Cyprus and Paphos | |||||||
| Home | Property for Rent | Property for Sale | Property Services | Property Information | General Information | ||
You are here > Home > General information about Cyprus and Paphos > Folk Art museum, Yeroskipou. |
|||||||
The Folk Art museum in Yeroskipou is accommodated in a 19 century traditional house of both architectural and historical importance, the House of Hadjismith. It is stonebuilt with rooms accessible through two paved courtyards and a covered terrace. On the upper floor there is a long room ('makrynari') and a veranda reached by an outside staircase. The two-storey museum building forms the nucleus of a larger complex which once comprised the mansion of Andreas Zimboulakis' family. This house was connected with the name of the British commodore and later admiral Sir Sidney Smith (1764-1840), famous for his success against Bonaparte at the siege of Acre in May 1799. Soon afterwards Smith landed at Paphos and stayed at the house of Andreas Zimboulakis, an immigrant from the Ionian islands, who had settled in Yeroskipou. Smith appointed him British Consular agent at Paphos principally responsible for the provisioning of the British men-of-war that were patrolling the eastern Mediterranean. Since Sir Sidney Smith visited the house frequently, it came to be known as 'Smith's house' and, in honour of the British admiral, Zimboulakis' son, who succeeded his father as Consular agent in 1826, was named Smith Zimboulakis. Their house was considered a mansion in those times and from 1800 to 1864 it served as the residence of the British Consular agents at Paphos. The Spanish traveller Ali Bey (1806) and the Briton W. Turner (1815) who stayed as guests in the house of Andreas Zimboulakis praise the 'gentlemanly and courteous' host. Ali Bey noted further that the eldest daughter of Zimboulakis was a worthy inhabitant of the 'sacred garden of Aphrodite' and the most perfectly beautiful person he had seen in Cyprus. Because of its architectural and historical importance, the 'House of Hadjismith' is one of the first buildings of folk architecture to have been declared an 'Ancient Monument' by law. The Department of Antiquities acquired half of the house in 1947/48 and the other half in 1974. After systematic restoration, the building was converted into a folk art museum, which has been open to the public since 1978. In order to extend the museum by including the ruined buildings, which in the past had formed an integral part of the same mansion, a major project of restoration work and reorganisation has been undertaken. A new room with a covered veranda in front was constructed to form the main entrance to the museum. The spacious courtyard on this side has been laid out as a garden, which includes a water-raising wheel ('alakati') and an olive press. The collection of the museum has been considerably enriched and the conservation of exhibits is a continuous task. The exhibition of many items has now been rearranged. Special measures have been taken to create a suitable museum environment with proper lighting conditions for the safekeeping of sensitive items such as embroideries and costumes. The room next to the entrance is exclusively devoted to didactic material providing an introduction to the museum as a whole. Since most museum exhibits are objects related to the activities of everyday life in the recent past, the text and photographs shown here are concerned with traditional agriculture and scenes of rural life, local handicraft and craftsmen, silk, manufacture and rope-making. A special unit is devoted to the history of the building itself. The agricultural implements and mule trappings are exhibited in the storeroom and the stable which have been restored. Shepherds' equipment along with several examples of basketry, craftsmen's tools, glass vessels, a home still for producing rosewater, and a weaving loom are exhibited in another room on the ground floor accessible from both courtyards. Also displayed is a hand-turned cotton de-seeder. A similar wooden apparatus used for cleaning the cotton staple of seeds is described by a traveller who visited Cyprus in the 16th century. A smaller room opening onto the back yard houses the apparatus for processing hemp and flax and for the manufacture of rope. The machinery for the reeling of the silk, called 'anapinistiri', has been installed in an outhouse in the yard of the museum. In the spring months visitors have the opportunity to watch the silkworms feeding on mulberry leaves in a shadowy place and at a later stage, the newly spun cocoons on branches of thyme. Silk was once one of the most important products of Cyprus. In May silkmakers visited the various silk-producing centres. After setting up their cauldron and wheel they began to extract the silk threads from the cocoons brought to them and to wind them onto the wheel in skins. The silk of Paphos was of a golden colour and was famous for its strength. Using the natural fibres of silk, cotton and flax, the craft of weaving, confined originally to household needs, developed into an important cottage industry and one of the richest branches of folk art. The ethnographic material exhibited in the museum of Yeroskipou is dated to the 19th and the first decades of the 20th centuries and comes from several areas of Cyprus but mainly from the Paphos district. Many items are exhibited in rooms specially arranged to represent typical rooms of a traditional peasant house. Such is the room with a hearth surrounded by bread-making and cooking utensils, a loom, a wooden bed, a breadbasket suspended from the ceiling and other household items. On entering, one gets the impression of actually being in a Cypriot peasant kitchen. A similar impression is created in the wedding reception room (called 'pastes'), set out in the way houses were customarily decorated on a wedding day. This custom was common, with several variations, all over Cyprus. In Paphos in particular, a special seat was arranged for the bride and bridegroom to receive their guests. On the wall behind them was hung a woven embroidered bedsheet, decorated with pastries in various symbolic shapes (such as a cross, a snake, a basket), which were made specially to decorate the house for the wedding. Several pieces of embroidery, wooden chests and copper cooking utensils which comprised part of the dowry, along with a variety of handicrafts, crosses made of ears of wheat, multicoloured flat baskets ('tsesti') and decorative pictures with designs made of silkworm cocoons, complete the decoration of this room. Of different character is the exhibition in the single long room on the upper floor. Representative examples of woodcarving, textiles and folk costumes, bronze utensils, decorated gourds and musical instruments such as a six-stringed 'tam-bouras', the 'tamboulekki' (a percussion instrument made from an open clay vessel with a stretched leather cover) and the 'pithkiavli' (shepherd's reed flute) are on display in showcases. Articles of practical use such as bed sheets, tablecloths, chests and vessels for serving wine are presented as genuine works of folk art. The Musem's collection of woven embroidery includes important examples of the two basic kinds of embroidery produced in Paphos: textiles with interwoven designs created on the loom during the weaving, such as the colourful 'phythki-otika' named after the village of Phyti, and the white drawn thread needlework and cross-stitch embroidery done by hand. These two kinds, which appear in many variations, are found all over Cyprus. The items usually embroidered include handwoven napkins, bed sheets and tablecloths and parts of traditional clothes such as the borders of the women's best underwear. Among several decoratively carved wooden pieces of furniture, including chairs, tables, cupboards and shelves, an interesting variety of chests is to be seen in the Yeroskipou museum. In Paphos the chest makers confined themselves to carving simple, incised patterns, but in this museum there are also carved chests typical of the Lapithos area, as well as other of the 'Akanthou' type with a combination of relief and painted decoration. On the front panels of the chests are preserved the most typical motifs of folk art: arches, flowerpots, rosettes, stylised cypresses, lions, the double-headed eagle, angels, vine leaves and birds. An interesting group of exhibits is the decorated gourds which were used either as vessels for serving wine or for purely decorative purposes. Among the examples there are gourds with pictorial scenes such as the bombardment of ships, animals and birds from exotic countries, hunting scenes, and a scene in a popular tavern. On some, the artist has carved his name and the date. There is also a 'tambouras', a musical instrument belonging to the flute family, made out of an elongated gourd. On its body it has an incised decoration with the inscription: 'by G. Papasavvas, Kathikas Village, Paphos District'. Taken as a whole, the exhibits in the Yeroskipou museum provide a vivid picture of traditional life and its expression in various branches of folk art before the changes brought about by the sudden invasion of modern technology. The two rooms next to the storeroom and the stable are presented as a rural house with a covered veranda and an oven in the courtyard. A separate unit houses the exhibition of traditional pottery made at. Kornos, Kaminaria and Ayios Dimitrios including the tools still used by traditional potters. Old wine jars and several other types of traditional vessels are to be seen under a portico in the back yard. Through the ethnographic material seen from these different perspectives, the aim of the museum is to transmit the values of the recent past and help us make modern life more humane. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||