TAVLA AND TSAERA

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The tavla (Italian tavola=table) and the tsaeres (chairs) were crude wooden furniture that served the daily needs of the family during mealtime.

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The older forms of tables were small and rectangular, rested on four supports, and their upper part consisted of simple, parallel, unprocessed planks. These smaller tables were known as tavlia. Similarly manufactured, but larger in size tables were known as trapezotavlia and were usually reserved for feasts with multiple participants.

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More carefully crafted and sometimes decorated tables appeared for the first time in countryside households early in the 20th century. These tables usually came with lathed legs and a drawer decorated with carved or incised depictions, such as birds, flowers, and other motifs.

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The tsaeres of the maerkon (kitchen chairs), usually four or five in number, consisted of a strong, rough-carved wooden frame, while the seat was made of a special type of straw, namely the floudi reed that was braided into vroullia (pigtails). The local tsaeraes (chairmakers) often decorated the wooden supports forming the back of the chair with simple motifs, like circles, rhombi, triangles, zig-zags or even small faces, and on occasion also decorated the seat by braiding in with the straws the green-painted stems of kazavia (bulrush) or pokalames (wheat) in a cross-shaped pattern.

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At the poorest houses chairs were scant, and often the children ate sitting on the floor, while the food was served in a straw tsestos (flat basket) placed on top of an overturned chair.