The Stemnitsians were renowned craftsmen, especially from the 17th century to the ear1y 20th century and distinguished themse1ves \u03b9\u03bd the working of meta1s, using the cheapest to the most precious.
\nThe resu1t was that Stemnitsa became famous thanks to its coppersmiths, brass-smiths and especially its goldsmiths.
\nThese craftsmen had their permanent workshops \u03afn Stemnitsa but were also itinerant. They travelled for most of the year and went farther than even the boundaries of Arcadia or the Peloponnese. They went from the Ionian isles to Constantinople and from Egypt and Cyprus to the Danube.<\/p>\n
These trips were made by organized groups of craftsmen, called \u00abkompanies\u00bb or \u00abbouloukia\u00bb and lasted for a few or many months. However, there were also craftsmen who made very short trips just to cover temporary needs.
\nThe craftsmen in each field, in order to protect their rights, organized themselves from as early as Byzantine times into guilds, which were later called \u00abisnafia\u00bb or \u00absynafia\u00bb.<\/p>\n
There were guilds of goldsmiths, coppersmiths, stonemasons and even bakers and tailors and others. Each guild had its own patron saint and its own hierarchy. in order to protect its secrets, large and small, each guild would create its own special coded language, which it used chiefly on trips. The stonemasons had \u00abkoudaritika\u00bb, there was \u00abdortika\u00bb and \u00abkosmitika\u00bb used by the comb-makers of Kosmas and many others.<\/p>\n
The craftsmen\u2019s tongue of Stemnitsa, \u00abstemnitsiotika\u00bb or rather \u00abmestitsiotika\u00bb as was its code name, is one of the oldest of its kind and is anagrammatic. An epigrammatic phrase, known to every Stemnitsian craftsman, is \u00absimo ke simo\u00bb. It refers to craftsmen who, during the years of Turkish rule, made lamps for a church with adulterated silver. The church council was naturally not satisfied with the \u00absilver\u00bb lamps and forced the craftsman to swear in front of an icon that they were pure silver. So the Stemnitsian goldsmith made the oath, saying: \u00ab \u2026 the lamps \u0399 made were half and half (\u00absimo ke simo\u00bb) which his accusers took to mean \u00absilver through and through\u00bb. This misunderstanding revolves around the words \u00abmiso\u00bb (half), the anagram of which is \u00absimo\u00bb \u2013 and asimi\u00bb (silver).<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Stemnitsians were renowned craftsmen, especially from the 17th century to the ear1y 20th century and distinguished themse1ves \u03b9\u03bd the working of meta1s, using the cheapest to the most precious. The resu1t was that Stemnitsa became famous thanks to its coppersmiths, brass-smiths and especially its goldsmiths. These craftsmen had their permanent workshops \u03afn Stemnitsa but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-576","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mpelleiko.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mpelleiko.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mpelleiko.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mpelleiko.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mpelleiko.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mpelleiko.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":728,"href":"https:\/\/mpelleiko.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/576\/revisions\/728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mpelleiko.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}