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 parts, each of which contains a different lozenge design. At the centre of the shawl, there is a lozenge containing rows of yellow dots. At the top left, the lozenge is divided into four squares with small pairs of designs. The top right part contains a flower with three petals. In the bottom left square part, the lozenge has seven oblique parallel lines of yellow dots on a green background. The bottom right square contains concentric circles made of white, green and yellow dots. 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. For similar examples, see Egoumenidou 1997, 43, fig. 12; Papadimitriou 2008, 15, 29; Rizopoulou-Egoumenidou 2010, 107, no. 74, 108, no. 75.   Dimensions: length 105 cm., width 110 cm.