Folk Stories - Imperfectly Perfect

In this story we will look at how boldly confident Greek women of the 18th and 19th century were when creating their embroideries.

So let’s start by taking a look at this beautiful detail of a curtain from the island of Naxos.

You may be wondering why the two colors appear in such a bizarre way. It looks like something has gone wrong...

Is it accidental, or could it be intentional?

You may think, who would want to decorate their home with an imperfect curtain, especially at a period when objects were used for a whole life time?

That was exactly what I was wondering when I first came across a similar piece of embroidery, as this is actually not an uncommon occurrence.

Folk Fact

The truth is very simple… but we’ll need to first put things into context.

In those times every item of embroidery used to decorate a Greek home would have been created by the women of the household in its entirety.

They would have woven the fabric, made the silk thread and colored it; they then would have sewn and embroidered the fabric to make the desired item for their homes.

Understandably it would have been impossible for them to know exactly how much red thread they would need, so sometimes they simply run out...

It wasn't available for them to buy more thread and the process of making and coloring new threads would have been very time consuming, but most importantly they knew they would never be able to get the exact same shade of red.

So they simply used threads they had previously made to finish off their work.

The most impressive thing - for me - is that not only were they not concerned at all by the different color threads, there are also theories claiming that they believed it to act as protection from the evil eye (a superstitious belief that is very much relevant to modern day Greece).

Some Thoughts

It feels like these women were comfortable with the idea of “good enough”, rather than “perfect” which is so different for us today.

They lived in a time of limited resources, so they had to work with what they had available and really make the most of it.

So here is something for us to think about…

Would we be comfortable decorating our space with something that was so obviously “imperfect”, but was made from our own hands or by someone in our family?

If you want to share your thoughts with me, just email me. I would love to know your take.