Fanning the embers of a dying craft

Andreas Dorgiomanolakis shapes a terracotta pot in one of the last surviving ceramic workshops in Thrapsano, a village in Crete that had around 150 such workshops up until the 1970s. In the business since the age of 15, Dorgiomanolakis laments the lack of interest among the younger generations to take up the craft. “I fell in love with it through my grandfather,” he told the AMNA. “In difficult times, pottery was a dynamic part of the local economy that employed hundreds of young people and older craftsmen,” added Giorgos Mavrantonakis, the head of the local cultural association, which is involved in efforts to revive the craft. [Nikos Halkiadakis/AMNA]