Sialin

Sialin, women’s shawl, from the village of Koilani. It is made of dimiton, a silk fabric woven with four heddles, and decorated with the tie-dye technique.   The basic colours are white, yellow, green, red and burgundy. The linear designs create a complex mosaic with lozenges, crosses, rosettes, straight, zigzag and curved lines, all of which are formed with dots, a result of the tie-dye technique. A large cross with an outline of white dots divides the shawl into four square parts, each of which has a central lozenge design. At the centre of the shawl, there is a lozenge containing nine small squares with three white dots at their centre. The bottom left, top left and top right squares have the same lozenge variation, consisting of six oblique parallel lines of yellow dots on a green background. The bottom right square contains a flower with three petals. The background of the shawl is covered with smaller lozenges and other linear and curvilinear designs. Two sides of the shawl are finished in selvage while the other two end in tassels of warp threads, in the burgundy colour of the background.   It is preserved in very good condition. This shawl is depicted in Egoumenidou 1997, 43, fig. 12. Other similar samples can be seen in Papadimitriou 2008, 15, 29; Rizopoulou-Egoumenidou 2010, 107, no. 74, 108, no. 75.   Dimensions: length 105 cm., width 110 cm.   Donation by L. Drandakis, 2017. Purchased from the antiquarian shop "Homeros," Soutsou Street, Athens.