Objects Archive - Page 5 of 10

The icon of Agios Athanasios from Sozopol

Thanasis Kalafatis owned an icon of Agios Athanasios brought to Greece by his family from Sozopol. The icon is signed ‘Them. Diamantopoulos’ and bears the date ‘1866’. Thanasis always had it in his bedroom.

The icon of Agios Nikolaos from Prusa

Margarita asked her grandmother to pass the icons on to her when she would no longer need them and Kallino agreed. After her death, Kallino’s three icons stayed with Margarita. The third icon is a relatively newer one, painted in the Russian style and depicting Agios Nikolaos.

Anna’s icons from Apolloniada: from mother-in-law to daughter-in-law

According to family history, Anna Raizopoulou was a particularly pious woman who lived an ascetic life. After 1922, she found herself displaced from Apollonia or Apolloniada, Prusa (today’s Gölyazi, Bursa) to Thessaloniki. Anna managed to bring several icons with her.

A sewing machine from Trapezounta

Ilias Vasileiadis’ sewing machine has been decommissioned for years and is now in the possession of his granddaughter, Vasiliki Tsouchnika; a precious family heirloom which secured the livelihood of her mother’s family for decades.

The samovar from Russia

The samovar used to be a practical tool in the family’s everyday life. Today, it is a family heirloom of great sentimental value for Emmanouil Michailidis; a precious piece of his family past and the roots they put down in Nikaia.

The icon of Agia Ekaterini from Malakopi

Christina Pavlioglou doesn’t know much about the icon, but remembers that her mother thought it could perform miracles and there was a vague family legend about it surviving a house fire. For Christina, her family’s refugee past is not only part of her own history, but also part of the wider history of mobility and the pattern of hardship and violence that displaced people have always had to contend with. �

A necklace from Scholari in Eastern Thrace

Some time between 1914 and 1918, Athina, a widow and mother of one child, Chrysoula, born in 1913, arrived in Kataltza (today known as Choristi, Drama) dressed in her traditional outfit. Her journey started from Scholari after her husband, a soldier, died in battle. Her granddaughter, Athina Chorozi, remembers her wearing breeches and saying: ‘They kicked me out of my house with nothing but the breeches I had on! Everything I had of value I
stashed in my pockets and I wrapped Chrysoula in the crib liner, the one with the chariot.’

A mortar and pestle from Peristasi in Eastern Thrace

Two families, Karras and Anastasiadou, became refugees in 1922 when they were forced to leave Peristasi in Eastern Thrace, a seaside village in Marmara, in the province of Raidestos.

The medical instruments from Panormos

The family came to Greece in 1922. Anastasios Malkotsis (1869-1957) continued practicing medicine in Thessaloniki, in Agios Fanourios, Toumpa. From Panormos, he brought with him his leather medical bag with his medical instruments and tools (scissors, forceps, vials, syringes, needles, droppers) and the bronze plaque of his medical practice, inscribed with his name and profession in Greek and Armenian.

Two small vases

Ourania Stamatiadou-Koutsogianni, the granddaughter and namesake of Ourania Stamatiadou, is a retired educator and the chairwoman of the ‘Englezonisi’ Cultural Association of Asia Minor Greeks of Nea Ionia, Magnisia. She is overwhelmingly generous with stories of her family and the rest of the Englezonisi refugees. Besides sharing her narratives, she also keeps two small vases brought to Greece by her family on a small display at the association’s offices.