THE EMBROIDERED HORIZON: OF SKYRIAN STITCHED MEMORIES
The Skyrian needle forgot pirates and sea battles, the fleets of the Turks and the Franks, death from the four-fold row of cannons. With love, it embroidered onto the ship’s hull all its carved wooden ornaments; it raised flower-adorned banners and filled the deck, the stairs, and the masts with sailors who, singing, unfurled festive sails. It matched the colors in fantastic, flamboyant combinations; it made the wind blow first from one side so that the sails would billow, and then from the opposite direction so that they would fill the flags.
It preserved the proportions dictated by its heart and defied—the law of gravity was unknown to it. It even “nightingaled” the sea, the fish were enough to suggest it. It flooded the sky with hoopoes, little fish, and other flowers. It set out to travel—and embroidered its joy onto the bridal headboard.
— Skyros Embroideries, Benaki Museum, 1965
Skyros, the largest island in the Northern Sporades, has long been shaped by a deep tradition of folk art—woodcarving, pottery, architecture, and weaving. Among these, the art of embroidery holds a special place, as the women of Skyros used it to adorn both their finely decorated costumes and their single-room homes. In the rich iconographic repertoire of Skyrian embroidery—brimming with flowers, birds, human figures, and fantastical creatures—depictions of boats hold a special place. Ships of various types, with one, two, and three masts, adorned with sails and flags, decorate the sheets, towels, and pillows of the Skyrian home.
One of the most significant examples of Skyrian embroidery is considered to be a rare 18th-century pillow, which features an imposing three-masted warship with four rows of cannons and a decorated bow. Four flags flutter gently on their poles, while a multitude of sailors are perched in the rigging or working feverishly on the deck. At the stern, a seated figure smokes or plays a flute. The water at the ship’s keel is teeming with fish, and the sky above the vessel is filled with flowers, birds, and stars. In the upper-left corner of the composition, an armored male figure within a frame, perhaps represents the captain and his longing to return to the island.
Next to this “flagship” of Skyrian embroidery, smaller designs adorning towels and sheets seem to reproduce, through simpler expressive means, the basic elements of the sailing ship depicted on the pillow we described: flag-bedecked ships with sailors perched on their two or three masts sail on calm waters, often flanked by smaller vessels with a single sail and perhaps oars. And even when the technique changes, and we move from the stitches of drawn embroidery (i.e., embroidery based on a design previously transferred to the fabric) to the rarer technique of counted embroidery on Skyros (where the design is formed by counting the fabric threads with the needle), the style of the design changes, but the basic elements of inspiration remain: Ships with sailors at the sails and birds on the masts lend even this more geometric version an equally joyful and rich depiction of maritime life.
The Benaki Museum houses one of the world’s most significant collections of Greek textiles. Its Skyros embroidery collection—largely dating to the 18th and 19th centuries—is celebrated for its vivid naturalism, chromatic variety, and imaginative motifs, which frequently depict whimsical marine scenes, sailing ships, and floral designs.
WORDS | XENIA POLITOY
IMAGES | BENAKI MUSEUM COLLECTION
