Articles with the theme: Costumes

VIDEO – Manolis Pelekis: A lament for the great tsabouna player from Anafi

Circa 1885 map showing Anafi, east of Santorini. It is a detail from the map illustrating Bent’s 1885 classic – ‘The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks’. Anafi was home to the great tsabouna player, Manolis Pelekis.

VIDEO – Manolis Pelekis: A lament for the great tsabouna player from Anafi.

The Bent Archive has been slow with its tribute to the late Manolis Pelekis (†2019) – legendary Anafiot citizen, musician and tsabouna player; for many decades no Anafi island event (Greek Cyclades, east of Santorini) was ever complete without his plaintive accompaniment…

Manolis Pelekis playing on Anafi one Easter (photo: The Bent Archive)

Theodore and Mabel Bent, tsabouna serenaded, travelled in the Cyclades in 1883/4, recording many occasions of musical evenings in their writings; here is Mabel in her diary in early 1884 making reference to an Anafi ball (probably hearing somewhere the skirls of the tsabouna):  “After dinner a fine tall handsome niece of Matthew’s called Evtimia Chalaris [appeared], dressed in a beautiful old costume of silk, violet flowered brocade skirt, green velvet bodice, gold embroidered stomacher and a short pink satin jacket edged round the cuffs and down the front with pink fur… There was a regular ball and the Demarch danced most actively.”

The Matthew referred to is the Bent’s long-serving assistant Matthew Simos, who was born on Anafi.

Theodore Bent’s tsabouna, now in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.

A year later, 1885, Theodore Bent acquired a tsabouna of his own – it is now on display in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. The couple were great collectors of things to make music with – wherever they  travelled to. The British Museum has some of their instruments from Zimbabwe, and  the Pitt Rivers also holds a lyra from Karpathos and various Cycladic pipes made from eagle bones, and other items. It’s time for a themed display with musical offerings for enthusiasts.

The main difference to the instrument played by Manolis Pelekis (over 100 years later) is that Bent’s Oxford tsabouna lacks the poignant brass cross on the chanter…

RIP Kyrie Manolis; listen to him play…

(The video of Manolis is an excerpt from a longer YouTube film you can see here.)

The tsabouna has a special place in the repertoire of the Cyclades and greater Greece; its history and etymology are fascinating. Take a look at our video exploring Theodore’s relationship with the instrument.

Coincidentally, on Santorini, just two hours east of Anafi (although it took the Bents close to twenty), you will find the musician Yannis Pantazis who crafts his own instruments and demonstrates them in his artisan workshop in Santorini, at SYMPOSION by La Ponta, in the traditional village of Megalochori.

Theodore Bent’s ‘The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks’ is available from Archaeopress, Oxford, as are Mabel Bent’s travel Chronicles.


Friedrich v. Vincenz assists Mabel Bent on Tilos in the Dodecanese: ‘All the women here are terrified at the idea of being photographed and my camera is rather a “white elephant”!’

‘Mrs Bent and her Camera. Photo by Russell & Sons, London, probably Spring, 1895’ (The British Library).

Although from 1885 Mabel Bent came equipped with the latest in cameras, and was appointed expedition photographer to the Bents’ explorations of the Eastern Mediterranean, Africa, and Southern  Arabia, very very few of her photographs are published or known – other than what have appeared in their books and articles, or have been transformed into the few Bent lantern-slides remaining in the Royal Geographical Society, London.  No doubt more will turn up eventually, e.g. a folder of prints dated to the Bents’ trip to Great Zimbabwe in 1891 seems to exist in the Zimbabwe National Archives, Harare (for those interested in the source, please contact the Bent Archive).

An old photograph showing Tilos fifty years or so after the Bents’ visit (and fifty years before its current tourist development).

Next best, in the absence of Mabel’s own work, are those images taken by other photographers more or less synchronously. There are several to choose from, but a favourite must be from the Greek Dodecanese, the island of Tilos, between Kos and Rhodes, and a wonderful group of Tilian girls and women taken in the late 1890s, just a dozen years after Theodore and Mabel visited Tilos and the Dodecanese in 1885. The photograph (see below) appears in an article entitled ‘Ein Besuch auf der Insel Telos’ by one Friedrich v. Vincenz (possibly based at the time in Smyrna/Izmir) and published in the popular German magazine ‘Globus’ in January 1900 (pages 46-8). The original article has been scanned, but a comprehensive (and now possibly inactive ?) Tilos website also has a fine page or two reprinting the article (in German, but an English translation is available via the site – which, incidentally, has much else to enjoy: articles, photographs, and an Italian-era map that is not much reproduced). Vincenz’s article will be of interest generally, although some comments are inappropriate today, with antisemitic overtones – such a common feature of the turn of the century, and here and there also in the writings of the Bents. The author does not feature much on-line; he may have been residing at the time in Smyrna/Izmir, but he seems not to have written much, if anything, else, and no images of him pop up.

‘Frauern von Telos in alter Tracht’, a photograph by Friedrich v. Vincenz from his article ‘Ein Besuch auf der Insel Telos’, published in ‘Globus’ in January 1900 (pages 46-8).

Focusing now on the evocative Vincenz group photograph, infants to adults, dated around 1900 remember, the women and girls show off their distinctive island finery. The elder ones might easily have met the Bents (perhaps some viewer is related to them? Do write in if you are…), but in 1885 the inhabitants of Tilos were camera-shy, as Mabel records in her diary: ‘… all the women here are terrified at the idea of being photographed and my camera is rather a “white elephant”’.  Friedrich v. Vincenz had more luck (his article also features a photo of a local priest).

Mabel was always passionate about costumes and local dress. Her description of Tilian attire fits so well with the photo (as she writes in her diary at the end of February, 1885): “The men dress the same as all the other islanders we have seen, but the women look very like Laps. They wear a very rational dress. A shirt which comes a little below the knee, embroidered all round with red and green. Over this a light brown coat is wrapped by a scarlet belt. The shirt has a small square sailor collar of yellow and the open front of the shirt is filled with a piece of coloured embroidery, almost hidden by the great number of necklaces of different colours composed of numerous strings of glass beads, reaching nearly to the waist. On their heads they wear red pointed caps of red cloth with a bit of gold braid straight up the front and down the back. A handkerchief with the point turned up is tied across the front, and the hair, which is plaited rather high in front, is brought low over the ears and behind below the cap. Over all they tie a towel by its 2 front corners and sometimes also by the 2 back ones…” (Mabel and Theodore Bent, ‘The Dodecanese, or Further Travels Among the Insular Greeks’, Oxford, 2015, page 114).

‘Three ‘trahilia’’, after ‘Die Trachilia von Stamata Orfanou, oder der Kraplap von Tilos. Text und Fotos: An Moonen – Mit Dank an Frau Papantoniu (Athen) und Frau Dina Vagianou (Rhodos)’.

Mabel’s reference to the ‘open front of the shirt… filled with a piece of coloured embroidery’ is noteworthy. This piece of embroidery is the τραχηλιά (‘trahilia’), presumably developed and designed to facilitate breastfeeding. Friedrich v. Vincenz also describes it: ‘Auf der Brust befindet sich ein vom Halse mehr oder weniger tief herabreichender Ausschnitt, der durch bunte kunstreiche Stickerei, meist in Schwarz, Rot und Grün, ausgefüllt ist, auf dem die mit großer Vorliebe getragenen Schaumünzen, sowie bunten Halsgehänge in Glas und Bernstein hängen.’

The Tilos website already mentioned above also has a delightful page (several years old now and perhaps no longer updated?) describing the three examples shown above, as well as photographs and stories of venerable matriarchs. [If any of the site’s contributors would care to get in touch, we would be delighted to acknowledge them, rectify any errors, and thank them for such interesting material (July 2019).]

Those interested in the Bents and Tilos are directed to ‘The Dodecanese, or Further Travels Among the Insular Greeks’, Oxford, 2015 (locals [2019] can hop on a ferry and get a copy from Rhodes’ Akademia Bookshop).

Mabel Bent’s collected Greek and Turkish Chronicles are available via Archaeopress, Oxford.

Greek Dress at the Hellenic Centre, London – 4 February until 2 March 2014 – with Bent references!

Greek Dress at the Hellenic Centre, London – 4 February until 2 March 2014 – The Bents’ acquisitions and their stories!

Although Theodore and Mabel Bent lived not so far away, Marylebone, in Central London, might seem an unlikely place for an exhibition of Greek costume, but it is the home of the Hellenic Centre, a focus for philhellenes and London’s Greek community. From 4 February until 2 March 2014, there was a rare opportunity to see an impressive range of Greek dress outside its native land. As part of the event (on Friday 28 February, 7.15 pm), Ann French, Textile Conservator at the Whitworth Art Gallery, the University of Manchester, used selected embroideries from the 1914 pioneering  embroidery exhibition (click for the online catalogue) at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in London, to trace their individual collecting histories and reveal the different contexts, interpretations and values placed on them within UK based collections and museums.  This exhibition, which drew on the leading collections of the day, primarily from the collection of Theodore and Mabel Bent and the archaeologists R M Dawkins & A J B Wace, of Greek Embroideries displayed, for the first time in the UK, historic Greek Embroideries as an art form. There is a short, but wonderful, promotional video on YouTube (April 2021).

“Embroidered tunic and skirt of linen crepe with square sleeves, embroidered in tent and long cross stitches with various repeating patterns of debased floral and other forms arranged geometrically.” Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (no: 346-1886; from Karpathos in the Dodecanese, acquired from the Bents (in 1886) after their visit to the island in early 1885) (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).

The exhibition features several  of the Bent’s finest costumes and pieces, and Ann refers to them in the last five minutes or so of her talk in a fascinating account of how, on Mabel’s death, one of her Karpathos frocks found its way back to Greece! (One other is in store at the V & A, and two more from Nisyros are untraced – if you have them, let us know!)

Another of the dresses acquired by the Bents on Karpathos in 1885. After a long journey, this exquisite cotton costume of the 18th century returned to Greece and is now in the Benaki Museum, Athens (EE 923).

 

Click here also for the small collection of ‘Turkish’ embroideries once owned by the Bents and now in the Harris Museum and Gallery, Preston, UK, and here for dresses from Anafi in the Cyclades.

(For the Bents in Greece and Turkey, see Mabel Bent’s Chronicles, published by Archaeopress, Oxford, in 3 volumes)

For a 19th-century collection of East Mediterranean costumes, see Les Costumes Populaires…

Incidentally III: Margaret Kenna, and the Bents on Anáfi in 1884 – My style rocks?

We are delighted to post the third in Professor Margaret Kenna’s Theodore and Mabel Bent-related series of ‘incidentals’ covering the Cycladic island of Anáfi. Margaret is a retired social anthropologist from Swansea University who has been carrying out research on Anáfi, and among Anáfiot migrants in Athens, since 1966. She has written two books and many articles in English about her research: Greek Island Life: Fieldwork on Anafi (2nd edition 2017, Sean Kingston Publishing), and The Social Organisation of Exile: Greek Political Dissidents in the 1930s (2001, Routledge). A Greek translation of the second book was published in 2004 by Alexandreia Press. Many of her articles, in English and in Greek translation, can be found on the websites: academia.edu and ResearchGate. She has also written several booklets which can be found in tourist shops on the island: Anafi: a Brief Guide; Anafi: Island of Exile; The Folklore and Traditions of Anafi, and The Traditional Embroideries of Anafi. She was made an Honorary Citizen of the island in 2006.

This third short ‘talk’ in Professor Kenna’s thyme-scented series involves an island dress: ‘Mabel’s notes; Theodore’s published text; BUT what did Efthimia’s costume look like?’. During the time the Bents were on Anafi in early January 1884, they were fancily entertained by ‘the demarch’, surnamed Chalaris. On the first evening, they asked his daughter ‘Eutimia’, also the niece of their guide Matthaios Simos, an Anafiot, to show them ‘one of the old Anaphiote costumes’….

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Mabel’s notes; Theodore’s published text; BUT what did Efthimia’s costume look like?

“During the time they were on Anafi in early January 1884, the Bents were entertained by ‘the demarch’, surnamed Chalaris. On the first evening, they asked his daughter ‘Eutimia’, also the niece of their guide Matthaios Simos, an Anafiot, to show them ‘one of the old Anaphiote costumes’. (Nowadays the name is more likely to be spelt Efthimia, as that is how it is pronounced).

“Theodore Bent describes her appearance as ‘magnificent’. In his description of the costume he borrows almost word for word from his wife’s account in her diary: ‘[the costume] consisted of a violet silk brocade skirt, green velvet bodice, gold embroidered stomacher [(a ‘stomacher’ is a V-shaped piece of decorative cloth filling the opening of a bodice], and a short pink satin jacket, edged round the cuffs and down the front with pink fur. The headdress somewhat resembled the pina of Siphnos, but is here called ‘the circle’ (ό κύκλος): it consists of a tall wedge of cotton inside, over which Oriental handkerchiefs are gracefully arranged, so that the ends hang down over the shoulders.’ [Mabel’s diary (kindly supplied by Gerry Brisch; 2006) does not mention the pina, but says ‘Her head was very prettily arranged with 2 of the little embroidered towels we use for antimacassars’.] ‘During the last few years this style of dress has been entirely abandoned; those who wore it were laughed at; and Eutimia that evening came in for a good share of ridicule,…’ (Bent 1885: 45).

“So – what did the ‘old Anaphiote dress’ look like? If we look at old engravings of the costume of the women of Sifnos, we can get some idea of how the pina (rather like a dunce’s cap) looked, and the fur-trimmed jacket:

Fig.1: Detail of old engraving of woman of Sifnos wearing the pina, and a fur-trimmed long coat. M-G-F-A de Choiseul-Gouffier, 1782 Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce. © Benaki Museum Athens.

“A traditional woman’s costume (in the National Historical Museum in Athens) from the island of Amorgos (roughly 32 miles/ 50 kilometres north-north-east of Anafi) possibly helps with what the skirt and bodice looked like.

Fig. 2: Traditional costume from Amorgos (image from National Historical Museum, Athens).

“If we combine elements from the two images, and re-colour according to Mabel’s and Theodore’s description, something like this might be what Efthimia looked like on that January evening…

Fig. 3: Hypothetical reconstruction of the ‘old Anaphiote costume’…. (M. Kenna).

Fig. 4: …. Or, maybe like this? Drawing © Judith Stroud.

“Anyway, perhaps you would like to visit the island this summer and try and find out for yourselves and let us know!…Of course with your copies of the Bents’ jottings in your hands!”

References
Bent, Mabel and Brisch, Gerald (ed.) 2006. The Travel Chronicles of Mrs. J. Theodore Bent, Vol I: Greece and the Levantine Littoral. Oxford, Archaeopress.

Bent, Theodore 1885 (2002). The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks. Oxford, Archaeopress.

See also the blog ‘Folk Costume and Embroidery‘.

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