Edmond Duthoit: Travellers’ accounts concerning Cyprus in: Excerpta Cypria Materials for a History of Cyprus translated and transcribed by Claude Delaval Cobham

Travelogues concerning Cyprus include valuable information about many aspects of life in the island, among other about the appearance of its inhabitants. Clothing is the first item one observes when coming into contact with the people in a foreign country, and is pivotal in creating a first impression of the local population. Travellers refer also to the raw materials and the textiles used for making clothes.   The architect and draughtsman Edmond Duthoit arrived to Cyprus from Beirut on 28th of February 1862, in the company of Melchior de Vogué and Henry William Waddington. They were the three members of the Phoenician mission organized by the French Government in order to collect information and antiquities. Duthoit returned to Cyprus for a second time in 1865. Here he grasped the opportunity to become the most prolific French ethnographic artist of the island. Among many other aspects of traditional life, he drew Cypriots of both sexes and nations, and in some cases described their costumes. In his pencil drawing of a standing Turk, the man wears a long overcoat with wide sleeves and a turban, a long piece of narrow cloth wrapped around his head. Duthoit was amazed by the Turkish ceremony of receiving guests and described such a scene in detail, commenting also on the appearance of the participants: “On arrival at the Pasha we were made to sit or lie on the divan and they brought the tsibouk, long pipes 1.5 to 2.00 meters long. Here the pipe, its dimension, body of amber varying in thickness, have their significance and one kind of pipe is given to one type of person and not to another. One started with compliments and banalities… then a tray arrived covered with purple muslin embroidered with gilded stars and brought in by four officers. The coffee was followed at an interval by another tray and another cover and by another four officers. This tray contained quite large bowls full of lemonade or orangeade, it was the sorbet. Imagine four men dressed in various colours half in European manner, half in the Turkish, wearing pantaloons and without socks, bringing in all seriousness a tray holding what? Four cups of coffee as big as egg cups.” (Severis 1999, 87-89, 93, 97, ill. 62).]