CENTRAL and EASTERN EUROPEAN REVIEW Volume 11, 2017
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CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN REVIEW Volume 11, 2017 SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE REVIEWS by Antonia Young University of Bradford And Colgate University Elizabeth Gowing, The Silver Thread: a journey through Balkan craftsmanship, Elbow Publishing, Padstow, Cornwall, 2017 Kapka Kassabova, Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, Granta, London, 2017. Florian Qehaja, International or Local Ownership? Security Sector Development in Post-Independent Kosovo, Westphalia Press, Washington D.C., 2017. Adam Yamey, Rediscovering Albania. Published by Adam Yamey, 2016. ISSN 1752–7503 10.1515/caeer-2018-0007 © 2017 CEER First publication 101 Central and Eastern European Review Elizabeth Gowing, The Silver Thread: a journey through Balkan craftsmanship, Elbow Publishing, Padstow, Cornwall, 2017, l64 pp. ISBN: 978–0–957–4090–4–0. The intricate search for all the roots of Gowing’s topic (Balkan silver) must have taken place over years, and all of these roots of her subject are covered in this book— its source, the lengths to which men have dug for it over millennia as well as its use past and present, and all the other people involved in both its working, designing and its uses and its wearing. In this, her fourth book since becoming involved in the Balkans, the first chapter takes us back again to Gowing’s early unfamiliarity with the region in which she soon became such an expert in several fields. Rob, the giver of a full bee-hive, sparking Blood and Honey, apparently also sparked this book with his gift from Prizren ‘two intricate chains that coiled and glinted’. And so inspired, Gowing made extensive efforts to gain both permission and escorts to take her to the underground source of this silver, thus becoming fascinated with the history of the Trepça mines, recounting also her own need to overcome her fear of a deep descent under the earth’s surface. She tells us that it is estimated that there are still 4,500 tons of silver still to be mined. She quotes from Noel Malcolm describing this as ‘one of the richest places in southern Europe’. She finds that in the 1980s the Trepça mines employed 20,000 people and supplied Yugoslavia with 70% of its minerals. Prizren, she found, has been the centre for silverworking for centuries, and actually spoke to Mr. Pasule who said he represents a seventh generation in his family in the craft (by the end of the book, we learn that he died, sadly leaving no-one of the eighth generation to inherit his skill). Talking to other silversmiths, she found that there has recently been somewhat of a shift towards filling orders from the Serbian Orthodox church; Gowing notes the irony here of this growth, supported by Muslims in the newly independent (since 2008) Kosovo, whereas previously Yugoslav, this would have been more difficult to negotiate. However, as part of Yugoslavia, she learned that 140 factory silverworkers were paid regularly plus paid holidays and that, in the former federal state, the majority Muslim workers covered the Orthodox workers on their holy days, and vice versa. Now the dwindling number of silverworkers are ageing; no young people are training in the intricate workmanship. 102 Central and Eastern European Review We learn that Kosovo is the only country outside Turkey (and including Cyprus) where Turkish is an official language. Amongst the many illustrations (some photographs, some drawings, etc.) is one showing the intricate ‘mousetooth pattern in silver crafting. While admiring a replica traditional Prizren house made almost entirely of filigree silver, Gowing expresses doubts about much demand for such an item at the cost of 2,500 Euros. By Chapter 6 (of 14 Chapters), Elizabeth is already thinking in terms of philanthropic input to re-ignite this valuable old craft. Thus combining an earlier and successful inspiration to revitalize the traditional kullas of Kosovo, she returned to the villages where several have been renovated and funded through taking in visitors. Apparently with little ado, she met some young village women eager to follow up an idea of combining minute silver decoration with card, producing original greeting cards to be sold in the guesthouses. Two of the women took her to market to buy cellophane which was sold there from large rolls (usually to protect handmade trousseaux items): anything wrapped in this can be sealed in by ironing the edges together—perfect also to professionalize the special cards. In her search for silver in Prishtina’s museums, Gowing was diverted to observe a traditional magje (a wooden flour storage bin). As an important household item, this object was decorated with wood carvings, amongst these she was shown a carved snake since every traditional home was said to have a protector snake living under the threshold. The author’s research into Kosovo’s silver took her also to Istanbul; specifically the Arasta Bazaar. On her way she learned words which she found in common between Albanian and Turkish and discovered that they formed a catalogue of luxury home items from which she surmises to be the Ottoman ‘civilizing influences; a recipe for successful colonization’. It was there in the Arasta Bazaar that Gowing found some elderly silverworkers with the same dedication as those decreasing in number whom she’d met in Prizren. Despite the passing of Albania’s strict Stalinist regime almost three decades ago, Gowing finds her travels around Tirana bring frequent reminders of the former communist factories from which areas of the town take their name: Porcelani (former ceramics factory), Kombinat (Textile factory) and the Enver Hoxha factory is still a commonly used landmark. 103 Central and Eastern European Review The author met ‘Dr. Linda’ who is devoting her life to saving anything of Albania’s craftwork, wood carving, silverwork, embroidery, traditional clothing etc. and repairing, preserving and cataloguing it for the nation. Gowing also met another expert, Luljeta Dano, whose life work from which she and her family are tiring, is with xhubletas (a bell-shaped traditional skirt, part decorated with silver, reaching down to the calves and worn from the shoulders with two shoulder straps at the upper part)—several very varied examples of these are illustrated. In search of a xhubleta festival, Gowing headed for a café in Lepushë where the competitors were women married in the last year, wearing their traditional costume. The detailed description of the full costumes of the competitors is also fully illustrated. It would have interested readers to know an approximate date when they might also enjoy this festival. Another aspect of silverwork was explained to the author by a young silverworker, Krenare: its use as a facial decoration for weddings. Krenare had learned the art of working with silver from infanthood as she watched her father. Now herself an expert on Kosovar silver, she also helped Gowing complete a related linguistic problem she had been long pondered. It was here too that Krenare lit up the hope for a good future for silversmithing. At the end of the book is a pronunciation guide, with much more thoughtful equivalencies than usually given. Every varied episode described in this book portrays Gowing’s real appreciation for the intricate and skilled art produced laboriously to create such valuable work in silver. The whole book is amply illustrated throughout, with photographs and intricate silverworked designs. Reviewed by Antonia Young, University of Bradford and Colgate University. 104 Central and Eastern European Review Kapka Kassabova, Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, Granta, London, 2017. 379 pp. ISBN : 978–l–78378–214. A native of Cold War Bulgaria, growing up viewing its border with Turkey and Greece, as one if crossed, would be to cement the impossibility of return, Kassabova later settled, as a writer, for 20 years in Scotland. This beautifully written book has won her the BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week (8th February, 2017). Prefaced with a romantically portrayed map extending around the border regions to which she relates so many of her stories, divides her book in quarters The middle two sections, ‘Thracian Corridors’ and ‘Rhodope Passes’ are enveloped between the first and last sections, both headed ‘Starry Strandja’ (on the Bulgaria/Turkey border). Introducing the book, and the reason for her desire to study this particular area, she notes that ‘this border region hums with an especially siren-like tone’, due to it having been ‘a continental confluence ever since there were continents’. In particular during the last century there have been major upheavals on these moving border regions during the two world wars and the Cold War, and the changes since 1989. Far from being a tourist destination, those drawn to this region, Kassaova tells, ‘are botanists, ornithologists, smugglers, poachers, the heroic and the lost’. Her route to the border took her away from traffic to the last place of (now minimal) habitation, ‘The Village in the Valley’ (which had been home to 2,000 until 1990), and from there into forests. The Village had been named after a Greek merchant long before the Balkan Wars when the Greeks fled this area. Now the little used road was sometimes found in error by people using a sat-nav, being the shortest way to Turkey as the crow flies. In her journeys around this border region which had belonged to one of several different nations at different times, Kassabova witnessed many extraordinary events and rituals peculiar maybe to only a very small group of people. One such was labled Thephany—in which a very diverse group of people were exhorting icons to mediate between the mortal and the divine. She also picks out a few significant words and explains them for readers.