[{"id":193109,"title":"The Dowry","subtitle":"Embroideries and textiles from Constantinople and Pergamon in Asia Minor, The Sofianos Collection","description":"The art of embroidery is a very ancient art. With needle and stitches, with loom and threads, women revealed their sensitivity, cultivated their imagination, wove their dreams. Vast embroidered fields travelled from East to West, becoming links in a chain of art and communication. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLinen and silk textiles were produced by women’s skillful hands, were transformed into costumes and trousseaus to adorn persons and homes on high-days and holidays. Customs and traditions, joys and sorrows have continued to travel for centuries now in linen and in silk with colourful threads; trees and flowers, carnations, tulips and pansies, motifs enclosing stories and fairytales, pass down the generations and set their seal on cultures old and new, so that they are not forgotten.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRichly-embroidered covers adorn beds, mirrors, chests, cushions and bolsters. Two-sided needlework, difficult but delightful in its execution, harks back to Byzantine times. Silver, pure gold and golden thread, combined with the many colours of dyed silk threads, shimmer like jewels. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe stitches, magical words just to hear, become poems, become embroideries: rizovelonia (stem stitch), trypiti (buttonhole stitch), alysidoti (chain stitch), richti (whipstitch), chyti and travichti (for drawn-thread work), kophto (for cut-work), psathoti (basket stitch), perasti (darning stitch), cevrovelonia (two-sided stitch used on cevres), gazovelonia (double running stitch). Their magic suffuses the women’s handiwork, composing surfaces of precious artistry, poetry and musicality, hymning an entire culture. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePergamon and Constantinople, Constantinople and Pergamon, the two places represented in the collection. Both also the places of origin of two people, Aristodemos and Myrsine, who joined their lives and who bequeathed to posterity this living treasure-chest of memory. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eConstantinople as metropolis of Byzantine minor arts, with a history of imperial patronage of its eponymous weavers and embroiderers, was source of the trend of decorating even humble houses after imperial models. From the eighteenth century, however, Constantinople was a vibrant multi-ethnic city, where the East with its habits and culture encountered and interacted with the West. Diplomats, scholars and men of letters hosted and attended European-style receptions, and the ladies’ appearances were impressive to say the least. Their demand for dresses, hats, jewellery was constant and the diverse workshops received commissions every day. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlongside the attire, the dowries were prepared too. Apprentices and experienced craftswomen, and of course male embroiderers, in their own workshops in Constantinople, undertook the most difficult embroideries. For the serious needs of the dowry, which had to be finished when the time came, nuns in the convents and embroidresses in the homes played their part. And from as early as the seventeenth century Western models and modes influenced the designs and their application on cloth, with the gradual prevailing of white embroideries on linen and silk for almost all the trousseau items. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePergamon, with its tradition in silk and linen, a place with an intense Hellenic presence and ambience, kept ancient tradition alive almost intact. Ancient stitches and natural dyes predominate in its handiwork. But novel Western trends developed there easily too, and this is readily explicable if we bear in mind that these European refinements actually originate from the Hellenistic model. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAll this fermentation is imprinted vividly in the Collection. Lotus flowers, palm trees, mythical birds, pomegranates, carnations, lilies from Constantinople and the old-established Sophianos family, converse with fine stalks of tulip blossoms, anemones, pansies, roses, daisies, as well as calligraphic monograms, bows, little baskets from Pergamon of the young Sophianos-Hadjipanagiotou family. \u003cbr\u003eThree centuries of history in one dowry.","image":"http://www.biblionet.gr/images/covers/b196285.jpg","isbn":"978-960-6849-42-8","isbn13":"978-960-6849-42-8","ismn":null,"issn":null,"series":null,"pages":288,"publication_year":2014,"publication_place":"Αθήνα","price":"60.0","price_updated_at":"2014-09-04","cover_type":null,"availability":"Κυκλοφορεί - Εκκρεμής εγγραφή","format":"Βιβλίο","original_language":null,"original_title":"Η προίκα: Κεντήματα και υφάσματα από την Κωνσταντινούπολη και την Πέργαμο της Μικράς Ασίας","publisher_id":1042,"extra":null,"biblionet_id":196285,"url":"https://bibliography.gr/books/the-dowry.json"},{"id":190483,"title":"Found Things","subtitle":null,"description":"\"In Memory of Happier Times...\" she says, surprising me, crinkling her chin and stretching her mouth in mild disapproving amusement. We are sitting on the veranda, the Saronic Sea is at its bluest and most transparent and I've just shown her my little Greek book with our wild green gathering expeditions, all four of which conclude at her doorstep, with me, holding bags of foraged greens, unnecessarily triumphant. She has been leafing through it, noticing the \"posterized\" picture of herself playing the piano and missing the other one on the veranda. I show it to her. She says nothing but flattens her chin and pulls her mouth in a straight line. I press the green tip of my pen on the empty space below the drawing and write: \"To my darling mom!\" Then I ask her, \"What else shall I write?\" \"In memory of happier times,\" she replies expressionless. [...] \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e''Found Things'' is a mosaic of seemingly unrelated subjects written in a style and form that is as unusual as the concurrence of the stories which it narrates. It is a record of four expeditions in the hills of the Greek Argolid to gather wild greens and a record of the decline of the writer's mother. It is about time, the love of place, about wildness, learning and losing.","image":"http://www.biblionet.gr/images/covers/b193642.jpg","isbn":"978-960-6849-41-1","isbn13":"978-960-6849-41-1","ismn":null,"issn":null,"series":null,"pages":96,"publication_year":2014,"publication_place":"Αθήνα","price":"22.0","price_updated_at":"2014-04-04","cover_type":"Μαλακό εξώφυλλο","availability":"Κυκλοφορεί - Εκκρεμής εγγραφή","format":"Βιβλίο","original_language":null,"original_title":null,"publisher_id":1042,"extra":null,"biblionet_id":193642,"url":"https://bibliography.gr/books/found-things.json"},{"id":193108,"title":"Η προίκα","subtitle":"Κεντήματα και υφάσματα από την Κωνσταντινούπολη και την Πέργαμο Μικράς Ασίας","description":"Πολυτελής έκδοση που περιλαμβάνει έργα κεντητικής, ραπτικής και υφαντικής τέχνης προερχόμενα από την Κωνσταντινούπολη και την Πέργαμο της Μικράς Ασίας. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eΤα κεντήματα, τα υφάσματα και τα ενδύματα αυτά ανήκουν στην οικογενειακή συλλογή Σοφιανού και συμπληρώνουν μια πλήρη προίκα. Τσεβρέδες, τραπεζομάντιλα, κουρτίνες, κάθε λογής εργόχειρα, κρεβατόγυροι, καλύμματα, σεντόνια, υφαντές κουβέρτες, φορεσιές, μαντίλια, γιλέκα, πουκάμισα, εσώρουχα, μαξιλάρια, υφάσματα άραφτα, χαρτιά με προσχέδια, κλωστές, μοτίβα, ένα υλικό πλούσιο και ζωντανό, βγαίνει στο φως με αυτήν την έκδοση, σε μια σημαδιακή στιγμή. Φέτος το καλοκαίρι κλείνουν ακριβώς εκατό χρόνια από τον ερχομό της συλλογής στην Ελλάδα, πριν από τον πρώτο διωγμό, αυτόν του 1914.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eΗ ιδιαιτέρων απαιτήσεων έκδοση περιλαμβάνει διακόσιες σαράντα πρωτότυπες φωτογραφίες εικαστικού ενδιαφέροντος, οι λήψεις των οποίων έγιναν ειδικά και αποκλειστικά για το σκοπό αυτό. \u003cbr\u003eΤα κείμενα δίνουν στον αναγνώστη πληροφορίες για την εποχή, το κέντημα, το μετάξι, τις κλωστές, τις ποικίλες βελονιές, την τέχνη του αργαλειού και του μεταξιού, και διανθίζονται με σχετικά ποιητικά και λογοτεχνικά αποσπάσματα.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eΗ χειροποίητη βιβλιοδεσία με μετάξι, προετοιμάζει για το σημαντικό περιεχόμενο.","image":"http://www.biblionet.gr/images/covers/b196284.jpg","isbn":"978-960-6849-43-5","isbn13":"978-960-6849-43-5","ismn":null,"issn":null,"series":null,"pages":288,"publication_year":2014,"publication_place":"Αθήνα","price":"60.0","price_updated_at":"2014-09-04","cover_type":null,"availability":"Κυκλοφορεί - Εκκρεμής εγγραφή","format":"Βιβλίο","original_language":null,"original_title":null,"publisher_id":1042,"extra":null,"biblionet_id":196284,"url":"https://bibliography.gr/books/h-proika-fab6b556-cac2-425d-b8d9-ef728bcbda74.json"},{"id":196339,"title":"Ο παρακλητικός του ηλιοβασιλέματος","subtitle":null,"description":null,"image":"http://www.biblionet.gr/images/covers/b199522.jpg","isbn":"978-960-6849-44-2","isbn13":"978-960-6849-44-2","ismn":null,"issn":null,"series":null,"pages":142,"publication_year":2014,"publication_place":"Αθήνα","price":"10.0","price_updated_at":"2015-01-26","cover_type":"Μαλακό εξώφυλλο","availability":"Κυκλοφορεί - Εκκρεμής εγγραφή","format":"Βιβλίο","original_language":null,"original_title":null,"publisher_id":1042,"extra":null,"biblionet_id":199522,"url":"https://bibliography.gr/books/o-paraklhtikos-tou-hliobasilematos.json"}]