The revival of Byzantium through early twentieth century domestic collections in Greece: Tradition, modernity and gender

ABSTRACT Between the two world wars, affluent and intellectual men and women in Greece assembled and displayed in their private homes in Athens collections of Byzantine and pseudo-Byzantine objects in order to recreate personal renderings of the ‘Byzantine world’. Some of these collections, like the one by Dionysios Loverdos, ultimately transformed into house museums; others, like the collection owned by Eleni Stathatos, were donated to institutions where they are exhibited to this day; finally, a few, like the one by Eleni Kanellopoulou-Zouzoula, were dispersed and disappeared once their owners passed away. In this paper, I discuss these collections and their development against the backdrop of the Byzantine revival in Greece and the support and promotion of Byzantium and its art by the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain. I focus on these collections as interior decoration; the appreciation and understanding these collections enjoyed, which varied according to the gender of the collector; and the changes in meaning as these collections went from the domestic to the institutional.