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Rural
Crafts and
Skills
Lekfaritika is the fine embroidery and drawnthread
work that has made Lefkara, the village
after which it is named, world famous.
Simple embroidery, known as asproploumia
(white work), was done in Cyprus from very
early times. However, in the Frankish and
Venetian periods (1191 – 1571) when Lefkara
was a summer resort for the nobles,
local women added to their repertoire the more
complicated designs created by Venetian
women. Lefkaritika patterns are mainly
geometric with crosses and diamonds
and the work is done on beige ‘Irish’
linen with white or dark brown cotton
thread. In the 19th century,
village men travelled to Europe,
and later America and Australia,
to sell the embroideries.
Leonardo da Vinci is said to have
come to Lefkara to buy an altar-cloth
for Milan cathedral. Lefkaritika is also made
at all the villages in the area as well as
at Kornos, Lympia, Dali and Athienou.
Pottery in Cyprus goes back to Neolithic times
and you can see fine examples from most periods
of the island’s history in all the island’s
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