Hidden Athens
Athens Threads
Half DayAthens
A private day inside the city's last working textile ateliers and the museums that hold their history.
Weavers, embroiderers, a curator from the Benaki. The story of Greek textiles told in the studios where the looms still move and the dyes are still mixed by hand.
Highlights
- Working ateliers
- Curator
- Benaki collection visit
Includes
- · Expert guide
- · Studio visits
- · Refreshments
A typical timing
Indicative — every experience is privately composed and timed around you.
- 10:00First atelier — weaving and natural dye
- 11:30Second atelier — Byzantine-tradition embroidery
- 13:00Third atelier — contemporary textile practice
- 14:30Close with mountain tea
Why do this
Behind ordinary doors in Athens are working ateliers weaving, dyeing and embroidering as they have for generations. A textile historian opens three of them and tells the story of Greek cloth from Byzantium to now.
Who will enjoy it
Designers, makers, lovers of craft, anyone who has ever stopped in a museum to look properly at a textile case.
A sensory guide
How each of the five senses is engaged through the course of the experience.
- Sight
- Looms in raking afternoon light; indigo vats; folded silks in flat files.
- Sound
- The rhythm of a hand loom; scissors on linen; a kettle in the back.
- Scent
- Natural dyes, raw wool, lanolin, beeswax-finished thread.
- Taste
- Mountain tea and biscuits at the atelier table.
- Touch
- Raw silk, embroidered cotton, hand-fulled wool — handled, not just looked at.