The handwritten graduation certificate for Athanasios Ch. G. Toperidis from 1898, which is exhibited in the ‘Nea Sinasos’ Association Museum, is only one of the hundreds such certificates issued for Sinasos men and women over the course of the almost 100 years that the schools of Sinasos remained in operation.
The ‘archaletsi’ could be plain or decorated, adorned with patterns, embroideries, charms, beads or other ornaments. The fact that these shoulder covers were detachable and were worn every day allowed their makers to create elaborate versions that could act as accessories to the traditional women’s outfit which was usually quite conservative in its use of colour and pattern.
The young women of Sinasos went to the water pumps to fill their clay pots with water for everyday household use. To protect the shoulders of their painstakingly constructed outfits from wear, they placed an ‘archaletsi’ over their right shoulder, a handmade cloth cover which they had usually made themselves.
In October 1924, the women of Sinasos brought their traditional outfits with them to Greece, as they considered them highly valuable both from a material and a sentimental standpoint. Some women even wore them during their first years in Greece before they were ‘hidden’ in closets for years to eventually be donated, usually by descendants, to the ‘Nea Sinasos’ Association Museum, where they are still kept to this day.