"The houses here are in competition about which one of them has the most beautiful paintings on its frontage. We make them by scratching the wall, that's why we call them scratches. There are special plasterers who do this job and there is some kind of rivalry among them. They don't all have the same talent, but they do share love for their craft".

Since the Middle Ages

John Kleisas, from Pyrgi of Chios, says that he once found an old diary dated in 1906 with some images from his village. "I saw some very nice scratches in there and I even reproduced some of them on the external wall of my own home. This habit is too old, we had been searching in the village and we had found scratches with the date 1893 carved on them. Special scientists report that this art has its roots in the medieval period, while they have also seen shapes similar to today's scratches painted on ancient vessels found at Emporeios, the seaport of Pyrgi".

Some years ago people didn't paint the whole frontages of the houses in Pyrgi. They only painted the space around the windows and the doors making small scratches. They also used to make scratches with cycles, radial and lacy drawings, on the ceiling of the house's salon, and they called them "moons".

Pyrgi has been characterised as a traditional settlement and the residents can't move a single tile without having a special permission. Along with the building layouts they also submit the designs of the scratches that are to be carved.

The village engenders art

Before making the scratches they spread thick plaster on the wall and afterwards a blend of dark sea sand mixed with lime and concrete. While it is still fresh they scrub it and burnish it with the plasterer spatula and the trowel. Then they suffuse two layers of thick lime, crosswise so that it can be completely absorbed.

Then they immediately take compasses, rulers and a small sharp steel tool, which is used for carving the designs on the lime. They plaster a small part of the wall and before the plaster gets dry they carve, then they plaster again and carve once more. The craftsman makes the drawings and says to his apprentice where to carve with a kitchen fork, in order to make it seem darker. The scratching process proceeds slowly and only to one direction, for the plaster not to come off. They only scratch the lime, until it roughens a bit.

The modern plasterers of Pyrgi are children and grandchildren of great plasterers, who gave their soul to painting the walls of the village in the past. Some of them even make frames, which have plaster with scratches instead of canvas. This village engenders the art that flows in its people's blood.
TEXT-PHOTOS: GEORGE ZAFEIROPOULOS
SOURCE: www.greecewithin.com

MORE PHOTOS 

Some scratches are traditional folk art of high level.

Pyrgi looks like a labyrinth full of narrow backstreets.

---