ABSTRACT
In the late nineteenth and early-twentieth-century archaeologists of the Christian Archaeological Society (XAE) collected vestments and liturgical veils made of Ottoman fabrics from sacristies in continental and islander Greece. These relics of Greece’s Ottoman past became the core of the Byzantine & Christian Museum’s collection of Anatolika yfasmata, a typology which translates as ‘Oriental fabrics’. Displayed in a separate case from the vestments made of Christian figural embroidery these objects were treated in a completely different way in storage as well. While figural embroidery was left intact, the Anatolika yfasmata were subject to extensive interventions. Many of them were dissevered and their pieces manipulated so that they would form panels, evidently paying more attention to their design than their use as vestments. This practice fell in line with contemporary European exhibitions of Middle Eastern art where the element of exoticism and otherness played the important part. The Greek case however is more complex given Greece’s status as a former Ottoman province, undergoing a Europeanisation process at that time. The ecclesiastical use of Ottoman textiles was canonical for many centuries. However, the Museum’s practice of keeping a mutilated stole in storage and displaying the panel made of its pieces clearly shows a new attitude: the object’s appreciation more as something ‘Oriental’ and less as documents of the country’s past. Taking also into account their description in the Museum’s 1932 catalogue (Guide du Musée Byzantin d’Athènes), where the word Ottoman is avoided altogether, the double life of these objects hints a multifaceted attitude towards the culture they represented. Ultimately, this case study brings up the issue of Orientalism within the context of a Europeanised country and how it might have affected the management of its ‘oriental’ heritage.
