In Metsovo, the art of wood carving began a long time ago. “The great prosperity and flourishing of Metsovite folk art began after 1659, with the exceptional political and ecclesiastical privileges, which the Metsovite archbishop Kyrgos Flokas obtained from the Gate and made Metsovo an autonomous democracy. At that time, wood carving escaped from handicrafts and ascended the field of art with the iconostasis, the despotic thrones, the pulpits, the shrines, the canopies of the epitaphs, the lecterns, the manuals, the luggage and so many other “specimens” of the churches, continued from the 17th century to the present day, and reached from generation to generation in the hands of today.
The “companies” of the metallurgists of Metsovo reached the most arrogant cities, to undertake the most important works of wood carving and thus to transmit their art. Metsovo has a very long tradition in the art of wood carving and the names of famous wood carvers are preserved, who also traveled to all the Greek-inhabited areas, in the Balkans and elsewhere.
According to some researchers, the woodcarvers “acted in certain areas and worked according to unwritten rules, based on customary law. The radius of action e.g. of the rangers of the villages of Konitsa and Tzoumerka spread exclusively to Epirus and Albania, while the rangers of Metsovite and Samaritan descended to Thessaly. However, they all flooded the wider area, reaching as far as the interior of Asia Minor and Syria and as far as Romania, influencing the local customs but also accepting influences”.
Sample of ecclesiastical Metsovite wood carving
