>
The Pandelis Chr. Karalis Folk Museum
The first attempt to establish the Folk Museum began in the early 1970s by Pandelis Chr. Karalis and resulted in the operation of the permanent exhibition in Kypséli (Chósepsi) Arta.
The collection was initially housed in the spaces of the founder’s café, in a stone building from 1928. It thus functioned for years as a living museum-café, where myth and reality coexisted with coffee and tsipouro, but also with humidity, woodworm, dust and abandonment.
In 1997, the collection was included in the LEADER II community program, managed by the Ambracian Development Company (ETA-NAM). Within this framework, the Karalis folklore collection was organized into a Museum of Popular Art and Life.
Pandelis Karalis began his collecting activity without any general or specialized knowledge of folklore. Perhaps for this reason, he was not trapped in the practice of collecting objects that seemed to have the identifying characteristics of the higher, quintessential culture (the “beautiful” ornament, the “delicate” creation, the “official” costume, the song “poem”).
For more than thirty years he has been collecting and recording a way of life in an area where he was born and lives: the simple, worked, everyday tools, the clothes, the songs sung, the entirety of the life and art of Tzoumerka, their wooden culture. He thus manages to connect the museum with life through its exhibits, which, in addition to their organic function, each reflect the local society and the culture within which they were born and which they express.
The collection, which is constantly enriched, covers chronologically the last two centuries. Its material exceeds 1,800 objects and includes utensils for agricultural, pastoral and household use, weapons and costumes of the region, wood carvings, textiles, embroideries, coins, tools of various professionals, etc.
Additional points to note:
- The translation is faithful to the original text while also being idiomatic and easy to read in English.
- I have used single quotation marks for titles of works of art and music, as is customary in English.
- I have used the present tense for verbs that describe ongoing or habitual actions, and the past tense for verbs that describe completed actions.
- I have used the passive voice in some cases to avoid making the translator the subject of the sentence.
Leave a Reply