Phini pottery, Cyprus: March 2024

Phini (or Foini; Greek: Φοινί) is a village on the south side of the Troödos Mountains sitting at an altitude of c. 920 metres. Just north of Phini village is the Chantara waterfall on the river Dhiarizos which flows from a spring above the village and provides it with a reliable a water source. Its altitude, however, means that farming is less reliable than elsewhere and, before tourism intervened, supplementary means of income were sought by the residents. One of these, pottery-making is still practiced by women on a part-time basis using small turntables mainly to produce decorous vessels for the tourist market, as well as some small cooking pots. Until the 1970s men also made pots, mainly large “pithos" storage vessels, while women, then as now, generally made smaller vessels for cooking as well as water containers. In the past, a similar tradition existed in the neighbouring settlements of Agios Demetrios and Kaminaria. The pottery vessels, even small ones, are essentially hand-built by coiling and scraping, using the turntable as a rotating platform but without making significant use of rotational force to 'throw' or 'coil-throw' the vessels. Instead, the bases and lower walls of the vessels are formed by making a depression in a ball of clay, then scraping the clay upwards to add height and thin the incipient walls. The height is then increased in stages by adding rings (or coils) of clay and scraping horizontally and upwards to attach and then thin the incipient walls. Once the basic shape is complete, pots are left to dry for a few hours or overnight before additions of flowers, birds and other clay relief ornaments are made. Little information was gained during this brief visit, made on 2nd March 2024, regarding clay sources and firing. Local sources of clay appear abundant and still seem to be used, but firing may now be carried out using an electric kiln. The decorous pottery currently produced at Phini may be an independent development or, perhaps, arises from a combination of medieval Byzantine and later Ottoman influences. Certain characteristics, such as vessel forms and their floral and zoomorphic relief mouldings, resemble traits apparent in later Canakkale pottery of 19th century, for example, which, in turn, has been argued to represent a continuation of Byzantine naturalistic styles with Turkish floral influences (see Tekkök 2011, 227). Tekkök (ibid.) suggests that the ethnically-diverse composition of the population of Canakkale since the eighteenth century may have facilitated the distribution of pottery to remote locations such as Cyprus, as well as the Black Sea, the southern Aegean and elsewhere, although the suggestion of any direct or indirect influence of such imported wares upon Cypriot village potters remains speculative. [NAME TO ADD], the potter who kindly demonstrated her craft and allowed it to be filmed has a workshop in the lower, central part of the village where she hosts workshops as well as making vessels for sale. Other recent potters in the village include Sofronia Theodorou in the upper part of the village (CHECK). Further reading: Ionas, I, 2000, Traditional Pottery and Potters in Cyprus: The Disappearance of an Ancient Craft Industry in the 19th and 20th Centuries [Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs 6], Aldershot, Burlington USA, Singapore and Sidney. London, G A, 1989, On Fig Leaves, Itinerant Potters, and Pottery Production Locations in Cyprus, in P. E. McGovern, M. D. Notis and W. D. Kingery (eds.), Cross-Craft and Cross-Cultural Interactions in Ceramics [Ceramics and Civilization, IV], pp. 65-80. London, G, 2020, Wine Jars and Jar Makers of Cyprus. The Ethnoarchaeology of Pitharia. Nicosia. London, G and Karageorghis, V, 1990, Traditional pottery in Cyprus. Philipp von Zabern. Tekkök, B, 2011, REMNANTS OF ÇANAKKALE GLAZED WARE PRODUCTION: A Long Tradition of Glazing in the Troad Region. Near Eastern Archaeology , Vol. 74, No. 4 (December 2011), pp. 226-235. The American Schools of Oriental Research.