He
is sitting on his chair, working with the tools he has handled
for 50 years, a smile on his face. His eyes betray he is living
in his own world; a world of perfection, of immense beauty,
of creative harmony but, above all, a world of simple peace.
Stavros Melissinos is a happy man, in heart and soul.
You
would expect to find him on the beach of a small secluded Greek
bay, you imagine him walking the green slopes of the Greek
mountains, holding a pencil in one hand, a creased piece of
paper in the other but every day you will see him walking to
his shop as he has done for so many years.
It
doesn’t show he is famous, that he has become a tourist
attraction in Athens and one certainly can’t tell Sophia
Loren, Rudolph
Nureyev, Margo Fontain, Jacqueline Onassis, Anthony Quin, George
Peppard, Ursula Andress, Josep Cotton, Garry Cooper have all
worn the sandals he makes. The Beatles even have been at his
shop four times. All priestesses at the Olympic flame ceremony
in Olympia, walk on his sandals that are based on the footwear
of Helen, Plato and Pericles. One can easily say this fragile
looking, always smiling Athenian, is as well known, yes, even
as much an artist, as his famous clientele is. Many of the
worlds major tv stations and networks have been to see him
as have uncountable newspapers and magazines. At the end of
September 2004 Sofia, Queen of Spain, visited the shop. She
bought a pair of sandals for Crown Prince Felipe de Borbon
y Grecia.
Many
times I said: stay with at your level sandalmaker
But ideas and words around me buzz like a beehive.
The immaterial swarm drinks the blooming souls dew
And the poetry’s honey is made to give life.
While
creating one of the 35 models of his sandals, Stavros Melissinos
creates poetry in his head. Born in 1929, the poet-sandalmaker
started writing poetry during his army service in 1953. One
year later he took over the shop where his father sold rubber-bottom
sandals. Melissinos has published 10 books of poetry; he wrote
plays and essays and translated many literary greats into Greek.
A lot of his work has been translated into English, French,
German and Italian. He wrote his best know work in 1959. “Melissinos
Rubaiyat”, where all 127 stanzas celebrate wine and it
is on the curriculum of many universities.
His
poetry is lyrical, philosophical and simple. He has reached
the level where one of his works, the play “Chastity
Belt”, is banned in Greece for political reasons, a fact
of which he is very proud.
Even
if I know not where I go, from whence I came
For better or worse this world as home I claim.
Before you go have a child or plant a tree
Thus, new hope will grow to set new souls free.
Stavros
Melissinos and his wife Sophia Apessos, have three children;
two sons and a daughter. Pantelis Melissinos is stepping in
the footsteps where his fathers’ sandals went before.
He was born in Athens in 1959 and studied Fine Arts (illustration
and painting) at Parsons School of Design in New York. He also
studied music at the Odeon Athenon and is working as a set
and costume designer. He wrote three plays and he is a gifted
painter with many exhibitions. Like his father, and his father
before him, Pantellis also is a sandalmaker who will carry
on his family’s sandal tradition.
Sophia,
Stavros’ wife, is always by his side. Sitting quietly
on a chair in the shop, close by her husband; she is his moral
support, his living conscience, his branch when, after a high
flight, the eagle lands in her tree. She does not stand in
his shadow, she has become it, being happy and content with
the sunlight her husband stands in.
Every
day, Stavros is in his shop, making sandals with his hands,
creating poetry and plays in his head. All of his creations
last a life time, both because of their high quality. Difficult
feet? Special size? Stavros will make the sandals for you and
they will feel as if you were born with them.
Stavros
Melissinos, the poet-sandalmaker of Athens and happy man, creates
and radiates pure beauty
…for both ends of the human body.
2
Aghias Theklas Street (opposite Monastiraki Square).
Monastiraki