Of the roughly 19 tsikalaria in Margarites today, only three still double as pitharadika, producing massive pitharia, huge vessels of the type used since ancient times to store goods.

One of these is Markos’ workshop. A fourth-generation pitharas, he comes from a long line of potters on both his mother’s and father’s side. “We are eleven siblings, and six of us learned this craft from our father,” Markos says. “I work on the large jars together with one of my brothers, while the others focus on the smaller pieces. I learned the craft right here as a little boy.”

From childhood until the age of twenty, Markos prepared the clay for his father, later mastering the craft himself and eventually opening his own workshop.
“A pitharas never worked alone – he always had at least three or four assistants. One carried the clay from the clay pit; another brought the firewood. Many farmers, when clearing their fields, would gather bundles of pruned branches and take them to the potter to sell. That way, they earned a little money and the pitharas had wood for the kiln,” Markos recalls.

Margarites is blessed not only with good clay soil, but also with something more special: a dark gray earth called lepida. “It comes from up there, in the highlands,” explains Markos. “Lepida makes the big jar durable – it won’t crack in the fire, it won’t split under the sun or while drying. In the old days, people even used it on rooftops. When crushed, lepida formed a greasy, glass-like crust that acted as insulation. If I’m not mistaken, they sometimes mixed it with salt too.” It was an excellent waterproofing material that helped households endure the winter, keeping the damp out.

In pottery, one-third lepida is mixed into the clay, after a long process of breaking, grinding, sifting, draining, and letting the soil set. “But if you add too much,” Markos warns, “the mix becomes sandy, harsh, difficult to work with. It loses its smoothness – it’s like a barley rusk. The vessels don’t hold up well, especially bowls; they can’t keep their shape while being worked.”

Markos is one of the few craftsmen who still know how to shape Minoan-style jars with their distinctive three handles, making them with his own clay gathered from the mountainside. These large vessels were traditionally intended for the storage of olive oil, but also for carobs, flour, or whatever crop each household produced, sealed at the top with a ceramic stopper (pouma).

For smaller wares, he uses Italian or Marousi clay. He also knows how to recycle spasidia, the unfired offcuts from other workshops. He grinds them into powder, mixes them with fresh clay, and reuses them in specific vessels. Always curious, he studies ancient Minoan and Cycladic pottery, observes ceramics recovered from shipwrecks, experiments with his own blends, then sits at the wheel and shapes them anew.

Most of Markos’ ceramics are utilitarian. Basins and smaller bowls for kneading dough, water jugs, pointed amphorae, clay pots for cooking, and ammotsikala – vessels with the distinctive Minoan spout and handle, once used to roast chickpeas.

Another vessel he makes is the nistata, once used to separate olive oil. It was filled with olive paste and left until the dregs (katsigeros) settled at the bottom, leaving the pure oil at the top. At its base, there was a small hole sealed with a cork. Once removed, the sediment drained out; when the oil began to flow, the cork was put back in.

He also makes tomedes (stands for resting large jars), old-style ladomprika (ceramic oil cruets for serving olive oil at the table), and wide-bottomed varkostamna (jugs designed for boat transport so they would not tip over in rough seas). Other items include armeous for milking, small jars (kouroupakia) for olives, cheese, or cured meats, lainia and little wine and raki jars complete with thimble-sized cups.

Remarkably, he even makes the ancient round ceramic beehives – a Cycladic and eastern Cretan design – which were built horizontally into walls or stone terraces, to collect honey. The local equivalent, known as margaritones, are similar but placed upright, with a small opening at the base for the bees to enter and exit. Markos even crafts ceramic smokers for beekeepers, once fueled with smoldering dung to produce smoke. He has also tried to recreate a Cycladic smoker he saw in Sifnos (his wife, herself a potter, is from there), but the excavated examples are broken, and their unusual, perforated design with a lid has not yet allowed him to make a fully functional replica.

Many of his vessels are decorated with the fyllaraki motif, a simple design characteristic of Margarites, found in workshops throughout the village. The pattern is applied with a special tool: a thin reed, like a writing pencil, tipped with a long wick of sheep’s wool. Dipped into diluted white clay slip, the wool brush creates quick strokes of little leaves across the reddish surface of the pot. After firing, the white motif retains its brightness, standing out against the darker clay.

Markos is not interested in the modern designs found in most other studios. Like his great-grandfather Antonis Vavoudakis and his grandfather Georgios Skordalos, he makes only what has been passed down to him. In this way, he perpetuates a tradition with roots deep in time; one that connects his craft to the wider arts of his land, perhaps even to the art of food itself and to the inherited wisdom of household economy. V.K.