silky and meaningful gifts
from the places you dream of or miss...
the tie “Heart of the Codex”.
The pictures that we used for the scarves decorate the book identified as the Codex of Berat no. 4, written by an anonymous scribe in the 12th century in Constantinople, while for the tie we used the image of a headpiece from Codex of Vlora no. 11, also from an anonymous artist.
Whether these luxurious manuscripts came to Berat or Vlora before the Ottoman conquest, or during it, is still to investigate, but what is most important is that it was saved there. The oral tradition says that the holy books, housed in the neighborhood of the castle in Berat would be hidden in time of war, or if possible danger was around, and were brought to their natural place, in churches, in peaceful times. While the Chronicle of Theodoulos tells us that Theodoulos himself, a local priest, helped by count Skuripekis, saved 27 books in 1356, when the Serbian army of Dushan was threatening the city.
Project with The State Archive of Albania: the scarves and a tie designed from the Illustrartions in the Codeces of 12 century AD one of the Albania’s hidden treausures
Two other Berat codices, Codex Beratinus I (known also as ‘Beratinus Purpureum’) and Codex Beratinus II (otherwise ‘Aureus Anthimi’), dating respectively to the 6th and 9th centuries, are part of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.
We believe the tender touch of silk of Triqita’s scarves Codex of Berat, makes you feel the touch of everlasting beauty, dedicated to God a long time ago by the anonymous artists. The beauty that never fades.
Triqita kindly appreciates the Central State Archive of Albania in Tirana for giving us an opportunity to make this scarves and the archivist Sokol Çunga for guiding us through the world of Codices.
“A home without books is like a body without a soul”. Albania is the home of some very special books - 119 Byzantine and Post Byzantine books or fragments of books, covering a historical period from the 6th to the end of the 19th century. These books were used in the everyday life of the Orthodox Church. When believers needed to read the Gospels, the Divine Liturgy, biographies of saints, hymns or church services dedicated to God and saints, or pray to God by music, they would use these books.
Each book is hand written and some of them richly decorated with gold. The place of their production varies: Constantinople, Epirus, Macedonia, Albania or South Italy. They are living objects, thousands of people’s voices speaking to us through words and images. And the images are of such divine beauty that they called us to bring it to the broader light and let more people to know and enjoy what is preserved in the safe home of these books - in the Central State Archive of Albania in Tirana.
Triqita transferred some pictures from the ancient parchment pages to the modern silk scarves and a tie, doing a digital restoration on the way and making our own composition. Finally we designed the natural silk chiffon scarves “Codex of Berat” and