The cultural week held recently in the mountain villages of the Limassol area was great fun, and as usual gave visitors the rare chance of seeing some of the more unusual crafts being made. This year one of the demonstrations was the making of mandilia – the traditional headscarves that are still worn by many of the older ladies in the villages, but at one time, in days gone by were worn by nearly every Cypriot woman over the age of 16 years.

Mandilia - an important item of the traditional costume….

Depending on her position the village women would wear different coloured headscarves. The young pretty girls would wear bright red headscarves until their wedding day when they swapped the scarlet scarves for the more subdued shade known as xithi - which was a deep claret red. Once the woman reached the age of fifty she changed the colour of her headscarf once again to a very modest brown shade which she would wear for many years to come, except when she donned a black scarf to tell the world that sadly she had been widowed. The women usually wore large white mandilia when they were working out in the fields because the darker colours just held the heat too much, and the larger headscarves gave badly -needed shade to the face. Sometimes the women who lived in a certain area favoured a completely different colour - for example those who lived in the Morphou area often wore green headscarves.

Headscarves made to traditional designs.

The headscarves were always hand-made and hand printed by the women themselves and the material was always coloured by vegetable dyes that were said to improve the more they were washed. Today only a handful of women continue the scarf-making tradition.

The headscarves were either made from fine imported muslin or from fine cotton woven by the villagers on their large woofahs - wooden looms. The material would be cut carefully to size and then would be washed to soften it. Elderly villagers in the Laona village of Kritou Terra remember seeing their mothers washing the material for new scarves in the village's washing holes.

A headscarf with a beautiful pattern…

Once the cloth had dried it would be carefully stamped with a design along its edges using a special wooden block with the design painted with a dye that contains a high percentage of copper so is green but turns black as it oxidises. Once the design has dried perfectly, the motif would then be protected with a special glue mixture that was brushed over it that prevented the patterned area from being filled in by the dye.

The head scarves were always decorated with pretty floral or tree designs as villagers lives have always been intrinsically linked with nature and the passing seasons. Today the designs are variations on a theme of a ring of stylised flowers, but in the past the designs were very elaborate with all types of flowers and trees depicted. The wealthy wore truly beautiful mandilia that had been elaborately and painstakingly embroidered, but of course, these were far too expensive for the villagers so the much cheaper wood-block printing technique became increasingly popular, especially at the end of the 19th century when the headscarves were really the height of fashion! Today just one major workshop remains in Nicosia, but many other craftswomen still make them in their own homes.

A wonderful colour is added to the cloth

When the craftswoman is happy with the pattern and confident that the pattern is well-protected it is time to apply the first dye for the background colour, by carefully immersing the scarf in a copper cauldron of vegetable dye. When this has been completed the scarf, is left so that the dye can both totally dry and its colour mature. The headscarf is then washed carefully before the main colour is applied, again by soaking the headscarf in a copper cauldron containing the dye.

Once the headscarf is dry, it is time for the difficult part - to apply colour to the pattern - which have been kept white by the layer of special glue. The glue is now carefully removed so that the different colours - which usually include a deep shade of gold - can be applied, again, by block printing. Once this has all been successfully completed the headscarf is washed carefully by hand another dozen times.

The finishing touches….

The headscarf is now ready to be finished. The edge on each side of the headscarf is carefully rolled and stitched in turn. For very special occasions a delicate trim of lace or fine crochet would be added to the hem. Although they are now much rarer than they used to be, these traditional headscarves can still be bought in many village shops for about five pounds.

A wonderful display of this traditional craft…

For those who would like to see some of these beautiful mandilia There is a display case of them that tells their story in the costume room on the first floor of the Yeroskipou Folk Art Museum - in the village of Yeroskipou on the eastern outskirts of Paphos.

Information courtesy forsale.com.cy