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| Fyti Village Square. The hand mill in the foreground is part of an old wedding ceremony tradition - the bride and groom would push the wheel together, joined by their family and relatives. |
Something about textiles continues to captivate my attention - whether the complicated process of production, the textures of the materials, the amount of time, energy and thought the practice consumes - everything. It is no wonder then that within my first week of Cyprus I would be visiting a weaving museum.
In the little village of Fyti, on the side of a mountain with long, narrow windy streets, there is a weaving museum well worth a visit. Fyti's weaving practices date back to medieval times and are well known for their bright and vivid colors, as well as complex designs, woven with homemade silk.
The sweet woman who runs the museum directly contributes to its contents. She is the fourth generation of Cypriot weavers and her grandmother was a refugee from the Cyprian east coast during Turkish invasion.
The museum shows the entire process of making silk used by Cypriot weavers. Fantastically, the museum had a room dedicated to their LIVE silk worm farm, as well as all of the tools and materials used in the process of making silk.
The cocoons spun by the silkworms are pure silk - each cocoon containing a mile of filament after two to three days of spinning. The cocoons are boiled, allowing the fibers to separate, producing a long, continuous thread. Afterwards, the use of the spinning wheel combines three to ten strands together so that the silk is strong enough to weave.
It is a lot of work to make silk, let alone weave patterns and designs by hand loom. The ladies in Fyti sometimes spend years on one single piece - everything from napkins and hand towels, to tablecloths and bead-spreads.
The saddest part is that the practice of the hand loom and silk weaving is dissapearing. Fyti and other weaving communities are struggling to keep their traditional crafts alive because the younger generations are not interested and have found better-paid occupations in the cities.
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| Silk worms and mulberry leaves. |
Above is the museum owner, along with a picture of her grandmother who taught her how to weave.
An interesting find among the hand-made tools used for weaving was this particular loom's use of bones for weights. It would be interesting, archaeologically, if this practice could be found in past Cypriot settlements.
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| My favorite weaving was the one above in Turkish pinks, blues and greens. This was created by the museum owner's great-grandmother who lived in Northern Cyprus. |
