Embroidery of the Greek Islands

This lavishly illustrated volume is the most complete study of Greek island embroidery yet published. Each group of islands developed quite different styles and repertoires of designs using linen, cotton, and silk. Varying populations — urban foreigners and rural natives, Catholic towns and Orthodox villages, invading navies and armies — all contributed to a fusion of styles and motifs that led to one of the greatest displays of decorative folk art to be found anywhere in the world. The styles range from aristocratic and patrician designs from Rhodes, the monochrome geometric work of Naxos, to the exuberant narrative style of Skyros and the Ottoman-influenced work of Epirus.

Roderick Taylor was brought up in India and the Middle East, and has always had a great interest in the art of the area. He studied Oriental languages at Cambridge, and his career as an International Management Consultant has kept him traveling around the world, giving him the ideal opportunity to research the textiles in the places where they were made. He has been collecting Ottoman and Greek Island embroidery since 1957, and has built up a wide and impressive collection. He is a lecturer on these and other textiles and contributes to Hali, the specialist textile magazine, as well as the Macmillan Dictionary of Art and the British Museum publication 5000 Years of Textiles.