South Aegean

The Cyclades and the Dodecanese. PINAX avoids the summer-island picture and lists three islands only for their work.

In Pyrgos (Panormos) on Tinos, Tinian marble craftsmanship is on the UNESCO Representative List (2015); the village has had a School of Fine Arts since 1955 and has a Museum of Marble Crafts. Carvers use the motifs cut into the island’s lintels and fanlights: cypresses, flowers, birds and ships. Resin casts give themselves away with perfectly repeated relief and no chisel marks.

On Sifnos, pottery made from heat-proof local clay in wood-fired kilns entered the Greek National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2022, not the UNESCO list. The skepastaria is the lidded pot for revithada, a chickpea stew left in the oven overnight. Because it touches food, we will not sell it until the workshop provides lead and cadmium migration tests.

In Pothia on Kalymnos, the historic sponge divers’ island, the sponge-diving fleet shrank from about 30 boats to 4 in the 1980s. Unbleached brown sponges are the least processed, while bright yellow ones have been bleached, and we buy only with harvest-area paperwork. All three objects are being verified.