Real Fake Antiques!
replica kylix filled with wine for research purposes |
When we visited Ephesus a few years ago, the stallholders had made a fine art of self-deprecatingly hawking their wares. One of their cheerful shouts as tourists passed was “Real Fake Antiques!” Good news is you don’t have to go to Ephesus to find a brilliant replica Greek and Roman antiques.
Opposite the British Museum, on the corner of Great Russell Street and Bury Place, is a fabulous shop called It’s All Greek where you can purchase replicas of objects from ancient Greece. Artefacts inspire my writing so I often go to press my nose against the window, admiring the treasures within: busts, statues, helmets, jewellery, figurines and crateloads of pottery. There is even a replica of a kylix – a kind of cup with a very shallow bowl – that featured in my book, The Pirates of Pompeii.
Elinor Wynne Lloyd in her shop It’s All Greek |
I also went out and about, teaching in a small specialist London school for children with special needs. They loved Latin, and I used to take in the occasional Greek pot, bronze figurine, owl or oil lamp collected on trips to Greece over the years. Just having these things to handle, draw and talk about made a huge difference to lessons. It meant we could do a bit of work on mythology and Greek and Latin roots in our languages.
Elinor: There are many things I miss but perhaps the most lasting memory is of taking trips to Greece. It was an amazing experience for me to see the girls’ reactions to the places and works of art that they had studied at school. Gasping in disbelief after climbing the steps on the Acropolis to look up and see the Parthenon for the first time; traipsing up to the stadium in Delphi, eyes on the ground, then to turn round and see that incredible view over the site and the theatre and right down in the distance to the sea; awestruck silence at seeing a full size bronze statue…. Each time, I relived my own reactions on that formative first trip to Greece when I was 12 years old and of the passion that grew from those experiences.
large bronze tripod |
Elinor: Some twenty years ago now, I wandered into a shop in Delphi, where I saw a glorious bronze tripod. At that stage I was teaching about Delphi, Apollo, the Pythia, the oracle, the tripod and the laurel. My modern Greek was rudimentary at best, but the shop owner and I struck up a conversation and together we carried the tripod outside into his little courtyard. The coals were lit, the bay leaves snipped and the ouzo was poured. I remembered then that in the Odyssey, royal storerooms were full of tripods which were exchanged as tokens of hospitality between guest and host. Here was I, in the centre of the world, watching the scented fumes rise towards Parnassus. Twenty years on, by design and coincidence, we stock that tripod at It’s All Greek!
terracotta turtle and other artefacts |
At the shop, there is similar fluctuation: the light one morning may strike a Cycladic figurine in such a way as to take my breath away. At dusk, the brooding shadows of a replica bronze helmet makes me stand to attention. A cheeky terracotta turtle – a replica of a child’s toy – makes me smile. The cast of characters is alive, each with its own story to tell.
Caroline Lawrence writes history-mystery books for children set in Ancient Rome and the Wild West. Her motivation is the same as Elinor’s: to bring history alive! This post was first published at The History Girls blog.
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