Greece in winter - "Start with the shoe"

Angeliki and Irini met at the museum this Saturday

Last November I had an exchange of emails with Jim Potts, husband of the Corfiot writer Maria Strani, about Ano Korakiana’s self-taught sculptor, Arestides Metallinos Αριστείδης Μεταλληνός. I had sent him a DVD of some 300 photos of the works in the ‘Museum’ that Lin and I had been able to enjoy visiting.

Dear Simon. Just watched the DVD again, this time on the TV screen, with Maria. We both think they are brilliant. Maria did not find them at all ‘naughty’ or controversial (it's in the eyes of the beholder)…He could eventually become recognised as a major figure…At some point professional photos would need to be taken of individual works, with top quality studio lighting. But it's wonderful to see all the works, the DVD does the job remarkably well. Thanks again. Jim

Saturday morning Lin and I were having cake and - for me, a skirto, Lin, a glass of pomegranate juice - as we again visited Andrea and Anna Metallinos and their daughter Angeliki at the ‘Museum’.

Anna, Linda, Angeliki and Irini at the Museum

Also with us was Irini Savvani.
I resign with reluctance to the idea that not everything that happens is a matter of chance or personal intention.  I met her on Wednesday passing in Democracy Street. She was with her daughter, Alexandra, coming from the bakery.
I said "Kalimera"
She said “Are you Simon Baddeley?”
“Yes”
“I read your blog”
After some pleasantries, I asked Irini if she knew of the village sculptor, Arestides Metallinos.
“Of course. But I have not been in the museum”
“You’ve not seen his work?”
“I met him at his house with my parents when I was a small girl”
I said that Lin and I had had the good fortune, after several years, to be able to see the collection – last November.
“I would like” I said “to see a catalogue made. Also a British friend to whom I showed the DVD that Metallinos' granddaughter entrusted me with, advised that a Greek art historian or critic should write a piece about the sculptor to accompany such a catalogue”
“I am an art historian” said Irini, with a smile.
We continued chatting. I remembered how vexing it could be to a child in hand looking upwards at grown-ups talking on and on about things important to them. Alexandra tugged, politely, at her mum's sleeve. (Is this what we mean when we say their conversation 'went over my head')
"Would you be able to meet with Angeliki and her parents, Irini?"
She nodded. The very moment I got home, after sharing this meeting with Lin, I phoned Angeliki and made an appointment that suited all of us at the museum on Saturday morning. I emailed Irini by way of briefing

Dear Irini. Thank you for agreeing to meet at the ‘Museum’ at 10.00am this Saturday morning. I will be there with Linda and we will be meeting Angeliki Metallinou and her parents Anna and Andrea to have another look inside the museum and have a brief look at Aristedes Metallinos’ work. Our meeting shouldn’t be more than 45 minutes.
I first saw inside the museum when we were in Ano Korakiana last November, having been curious about it since we came to the village in 2006.
Angeliki has convinced me that the work of her grandfather, a self-taught sculptor who didn’t start carving stone and marble until he was 67 years old, has for a variety of reasons remained almost unknown to the village and to the rest of the island. After she and her mother invited Linda and I to visit the museum we said we would see if we could help make this work better known. Angeliki gave me a DVD with photos of her grandfather’s work which I have shown to three friends in Corfu. In different ways they advise making a proper catalogue and having a Greek art historian help with this by writing an expert description. That you met the sculptor as a young girl growing up in the village and are now an art historian is why I believe our meeting last Tuesday on Democracy Street is ‘serendipitous’. Angeliki agrees and looks forward to meeting you on Saturday morning.
I wonder what you think of some of the illustrations of Metallinos' work on my blog:
Example 1, example 2 (especially!), example 3, example 4...
And this 'recrucifixion'
and this chimaera - the EEC
Aristedes Metallinos had many themes and seems a most fascinating man. Kindest regards. Simon

In my mind the place to start with any catalogue is Arestides' finely crafted stone shoe, made long before he began carving in earnest. Andrea could not unlock the show case so I took a couple of photo's through the glass. I would have liked to hold the thing in my hands and pass it round. Although Ano Korakiana was a rich village, Aristedes Metallinos' family were poor. In other circumstances a young man or woman who carved such an object in local stone - harder than marble - might well have been guided towards an artist's education.

Παπούτσι - Shoe, carved in 1928 by Aristedes Metallinos Αριστείδης Μεταλληνός

Work

The wardrobe that we are making in our bedroom, from a mix of new and old wood, has been added to. A window frame found by the roadside and stored in our apothiki is now in place. Yesterday I picked up a small cupboard door by bins below the village and that too is now part of our construction. We await one more pine drawer from England. It should arrive with other furniture brought from Brin Croft next Tuesday afternoon, courtesy of Daniel Blom. There's lots more to be done including stripping all the white paint from the old wood.
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So we visited the Metallinos Museum and were entranced.

The sculptor and his granddaughter Angeliki Metallinos

Αριστείδης Μεταλληνός - the man sits at work on a ram (a photo of him in the background of my picture) wearing a shepherd's woollen hat - as we see on countless images of the island saint. His art is almost unknown, even on Corfu, let alone the wider world. It seems he never wanted to sell his art, meaning it for and about his village, Ano Korakiana. The proliferation of stone and marble pieces in three small spaces on floor and shelves is overwhelming. The man was entirely self-taught. I'm only starting to take it in, but I understand that this work was only begun when, aged 67, Metallinos having been a craftsman -  cobbler, and maker of furniture, ovens and olive millwheels - found the time to become a sculptor. He continued on his collection, creating 250 pieces, before his death in 1987.

Aristedes Metallinos the cobbler

Cheese dream days

“It’s a cheese dream day” said Lin
“Go on”
“On days when it rained too much to go out, my mum promised 'cheese dreams' – cheese spread on buttered bread and fried”
“Toasted cheese sandwich”
“No 'cheese dreams'”
It has rained from the afternoon. I’m in vest, shirt and sweater. At night we need the quilt. Summer’s furnace light no long leaks through shutters, dancing bright motes of dust and sparkling mum's little chandelier we brought, so carefully packed, from Scotland.

“A few more days like this and the house will have lost the heat in its walls”
“We’ll be lighting the stove. Putting on our electric blanket”
But for brief patines of silver on the sea, rain and clouds advance our landscape from the south. There’s still an absence of the penetrating cold I take for granted in the Highlands, which - plus grief - set me back last winter until we returned to Greece at the end of March, when 30 minutes with a Greek doctor cossetted me to health, along with antibiotics an English GP wouldn’t prescribe, plus generous possets, at the Pyrgi doctor's suggestion, of chicken soup from Cinty down the road.
On Wednesday in sunny weather I was helping Lefteris, Foti and Adoni with pressing the last of their wine – some juice from Zakinthos grapes but some, this year, from Lefteris’ own garden, the weather not so hot as to wither them on the vine as has happened the previous two years.

After the final turn of the screw the press is unscrewed and taken apart and we dig our hands into the spongy cake of tsipira (what we call pomace) pulling it out in crude wedges to add to the garden compost.
Lin and I were invited to lunch as a reward for our help (as if helping is not reward enough!) and we laughed and enjoyed small crispy skinned fried fish, cold cod, bean soup, salad, bread and wine with all the family. We lingered as conversation grew into debate
“We are talking Politics” explained Natasha in English. You know Golden Dawn?”
 “Ne” I replied “Chryssí avga χρυσή  αυγά”
I know quite well the difference between αvgí and αvga, but, having decided to call them the 'eggvolk' I thought I’d try it out on Greek neighbours and was rewarded with hilarity. Lefteris observed how well the BNP are doing in UK, mentioning a double figure percentage he’d seen on TV. “They are thriving on present misery” we agreed.
I disagreed that the British National Party was having as much success in the UK as Golden Dawn in Greece; rather the opposite.
Cinty’s view, she shared with me later, is that one thing a lot of young Greeks especially won’t stand for, people who might, because of the crisis, be inclined to sympathy with the eggvolk, is the suppression of a right to speak your mind...“with the murder of Pavlos Fyssas they have shot themselves in their Greek foot”
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Lin and I have been using the rain to work indoors on the wardrobe in our bedroom. She's taken over management after I retreated frustrated at the intractability of the angles involved.

Drawers from Brin Croft; doors recovered from beside wheelie bins below Ano Korakiana

Under her guidance I’ve been planing and trimming surfaces, creating angles that accommodate the illogical geometry of the space in which we’re working. Shavings and saw dust proliferate but it’s slowly and steadily coming together.

This Saturday evening there was a knocking at our door. It was Angeliki and her mum Anna Metallinos. No they wouldn’t have a drink, wouldn’t stay, but asked if we’d like to come to the village museum.
“We never knew you wanted to see it. I’m so sorry”
This ισ a conspicuous slightly narrow building in the centre of Ano Korakiana we’d given up hope of visiting.

In the seven years we’ve been here it has never been open. Tactful attempts to seek an invite had not succeeded. We’d decided that the Metallinos Museum was not one, in the sense we had understood the term; not really a place open to visitors; rather a private house that happened to be called ‘ΜΟΥΣΕΙΟ’. A plaque tells passersby in Greek and English that ‘In this house lived and created his great work of art the first self-taught popular from Corfu sculptor Arestides Zach.Metallinos’. Two days ahead – meta-avrio - at 10.00 suited our bi-lingual friend and neighbour Cinty. She agreed to join us to help with conversation.

**** ****
I got an email from our solicitor in Scotland:

Dear Simon and Bay. Just a quick note to confirm that the sale of Brin Croft and the Lochan has successfully settled. The Purchasers’ Agents have authorised release of the funds and accordingly the keys have been handed over. With kind regards. Yours sincerely,  James Wotherspoon. Macandrew and Jenkins WS LLP

I could hardly not be anything but beholden to a house that stood close above the sweet river Farnack where, with my sister, I’d sat with mum as, at teatime on November 1, she breathed her last. The sale for a sum that derided shared pessimism and a rather mean Home Report – required in Scotland – vindicated mum’s good choice

Barbara, and her grandson Richard, at Brin Croft

*** *** ***
It seems hardly possible but it looks as if I may get my wish - a loose footed mainsail on Summer Song. I'm not a fan of the almost universal rig of modern yachts over the last 50 years - the Bermudan - preferring gunter or gaff. The Bermudan mast feels too tall. The sail though elegant is unwieldy and without a generous belly, and, in a world of sudden squalls, not easy, especially when single handed, to lower or even reef in a hurry. (see - parts of a sail) In the search for a seamless luff the Bermudan main is near married to its mast, running up a groove or hanging on slugs in that groove; an arrangement that's all about getting a tight luff to improve sailing close to the wind in competition - no great concern of mine. Summer Song's main has been a challenge when it come to reefing or furling.

Summer Song's main is a handful to furl or reef

Her previous owner, Norman, had been wont to stuff towels in the canvas he rolled round the boom to try and give Summer Song's main a wind-friendly shape when reefed. Imagine doing that in a sea and a stiffening breeze. So Dave has been drawing diagrams.

At Sally's Bar in Ipsos, Dave draws a loose footed furling main for Summer Song. Rob Groove looks on.

At first we thought of using another genoa rigged in the main triangle, but now he's found a mainsail that rolls up between head and tack, like a roller reefing jib; the type that reefs into a 'box' attached all up the back of a Bermudan mast; almost universal on modern charter boats. On the clew there's a sturdy pulley linked along the boom to a roller furling gear just below the gooseneck. All up the luff runs a stiff length of aluminium around which the mainsail furls and unfurls. The furling sheet runs from the clew pulley, just above where the main sheet attaches, to the furling gear and back to the cockpit so that both main and jib can be reefed from there.
"Blimey Dave! Make it happen"
"I've got the main and I think there's a furling reel fell in the sea up by the harbour. I'll go look in a moment"

Arestides Zach Metallinos

Arestides Zach Metallinos museum
Originally uploaded by Sibad.

There's a fine building about 100 paces east of our house on the narrow platea next to the kafenion with a detached balcony looking south with room for a table and chairs. The museum has always been closed when we've been by - only a matter of weeks between November and now. I'm curious to know more about this artist. Some of his sculptor is on display on a smaller balcony facing Democracy Street,