Material culture and forced migration in 20th century Cyprus

Presented in Greek and released by the Archaeological Research Unit of the University of Cyprus, this short film examines two traditional crafts associated with forced displacement in twentieth-century Cyprus: the glazed pottery of Lapithos and the fervolite lace of Karavas.

The first half traces the arrival of potters and other artisans from Asia Minor in Cyprus around the time of the Balkan Wars and before 1922. In Lapithos, the schoolteacher and entrepreneur Kostas Christodoulakis converted the ground floor of his house into a pottery workshop, bringing together Asia Minor refugees, financiers and local Cypriot potters. The newcomers revived the use of glazing, which had been neglected in Lapithos, and brought decorative techniques new to the local workshops, including applied relief decoration typical of the Çanakkale region and champlevé carving, in which the slip of the background is cut away to leave the design in relief. Although Christodoulakis's workshop operated for only a few years, local potters carried elements of these techniques into their own work, while Asia Minor potters also worked elsewhere on the island, including in Paphos.

During the war, the government requisitioned the workshops and operated them in Nicosia under Yiannis Iliadis. His son, Kostas Iliadis, worked alongside him, prospered and expanded his business with shops in Kyrenia, before becoming a refugee himself along with the Cypriots of the Kyrenia district after the Turkish invasion of 1974.

The second half turns to fervolite, a form of handmade lace associated with Karavas. Worked by hand with thread and a small shuttle, fervolite was made by nearly all the women of the village to decorate homes, to form part of a dowry and to be sold to merchants, including through sample books from Lapithos, as a source of household income for poorer families. Kalissena Kossari Louka, a refugee from Karavas, recalls watching women work the lace along the streets of her childhood village. After the displacement of 1974, when the inhabitants lost everything they had, the women of Karavas continued to make fervolite with determination as their intangible heritage and a direct bond with their village.