Pilot Collection: The Wool of Ithaca by Brigitte Moraitis (Ithaca, Greece)

Penelope’s Loom has had a home in my mind for a number of years. On a recent visit to Ithaca, Greece, to the village of my maternal great-grandfather, I met a remarkable lady – Brigitte Moraitis – who inspired me to bring the loom to life. Quite literally, as she taught me how to weave on a frame she had made herself, and let me peruse her eccentric artistic creations, both decorative and wearable, many exposing hours of hand-weaving. With raw wool from her and her husband’s own sheep – an ancient Ithacan breed they have inherited and uphold as a family legacy – she washes, dyes, brushes and spins by hand before incorporating the wool into woven wall-hangings, felted shirts, knitted vests and even handcrafted bags whose frames comprise the branches of their own olive-trees. Of course, I was in awe at the sheer wholesomeness and self-sufficiency of her work, and how strongly her art grows from and celebrates the land she lives upon.

Austrian-born, Brigitte has called Ithaca home for over three decades. Her husband Panaghis is a farmer, through-and-through, and tends to his goats, sheep and olive-trees with the hard-nosed commitment and pride that only a farmer from generations of farmers would do. There is no great distinction between their farm and their home – the livestock certainly do not entertain one, and the raw materials of the farm creep into the household before, with Brigitte’s patient ingenuity, they are metamorphosed into art.