PanagiotisTroupakis, one of the leaders of the fight for independence from Turkish rule in 1821, claimed to be a descendant of the last Emperor of Byzantium, and lived in Old Kardamili. Patrick Leigh Fermor, in his book Mani, wrote of discovering a descendant of this man, whose name was Evstratios, and of a morning spent talking with him and finishing a bottle of ouzo. When we were there we met a lovely man who had a shop selling herbs and oils and mountain tea, and we discovered he was the son of the man with whom Paddy had spent that ouzo-coloured morning ... and here he is, the Emperor of Byzantium!
When PLF first meets Evstratios he is " ... sitting in his doorway weaving, out of split cane and string, a huge globular fish-trap more complex than any compass design or abstract composition ... the airy sphere turned and shifted in his skilful brown fingers with a dazzling interplay of symmetrical parabolas."
And this is Evstratios with a couple of the baskets. The photograph was taken by Joan, PLF's wife and was used in the first edition of Mani.
I didn't see any of these fish-traps in Kardamyli but in Samos I did see the man below making a large one just the same. This one is made of wire and still astonishingly complex. It's impossible to my eyes to know how the man can weave such a perfect and beautiful shape from such an apparent tangle of wires.
