Exhibition 

Handicrafts – Manufacture – Trade

Cretan handicrafts over the past few centuries have been limited to essential items, while trade in a closed economy society was generally in the form of barter. The exhibition presents the products of the main traditional crafts necessary to the survival of a rural community.

Basketry

This is the ancient craft of basket weaving, which probably emerged at the end of the Palaeolithic period.

In Crete there are 25 types of basket, constructed with seven different weaves. Some of these types and weaves are now only found in Crete, while in the rest of Greece they fell into disuse at the turn of the 20th century. There were basket weavers scattered across Crete, serving the needs of the local community. The inhabitants of a few isolated villages in unproductive areas specialised in basketry. They transferred their products on pack animals to neighbouring districts and markets, where they were usually bartered for cereals, legumes, olive oil etc.

Briefly, the various types of Cretan basket are as follows:

1. farm baskets, such as the all-purpose classic basket with a semicircular handle over the opening, for gathering olives, fruit, wild greens etc. There are also large panniers which are tied to the donkey’s saddle and filled with grapes during the harvest.

2. fishing baskets, such as various fish and eel traps and special baskets for keeping live eels underwater.

3. baskets for special purposes, such as transporting stone for building or raw meat to weddings.

4. baskets for the home, such as spoon-cases, special pithos-shaped breadbaskets, and small straw baskets for weaving implements made exclusively by women.

5. storage baskets, such as the tall, wide grain-basket, larger than a pithos, which is waterproofed on the inside with a mixture of earth and cow dung.

6. farming baskets such as cheese moulds, muzzles for pack animals, cows and goats to prevent them from damaging crops, and skeps for bees in western Crete.

7. ritual baskets: wide, open, decorated straw baskets woven by women, for transporting the valuable objects forming part of the bride’s dowry, gifts for the best man or godparents, bread to be sanctified by the priest in church etc.