Description

The Folk Art Museum Avgorou - Pierides Foundation was inaugurated on 25 October 2002.

The community of Avgorou within its efforts to preserve, protect and promote the cultural heritage of the area, bought and renovated the Koutras' house, a rare specimen of traditional architecture of the area, built in 1921. This impressive farmhouse, built of stone, is one of the few houses in the area with outer coating. The Avgorou Community Council bought all of the construction, as well as a part of the plot including the stockyard, the water reservoir, the wheel-well and the courtyard. With the co-operation of the Pierides Foundation the house has been renovated and is now functioning as the Avgorou - Pierides Foundation Folk Art Museum, aspiring to bring to the community an invaluable example of the Folk Art tradition of the area.

The Museum hosts the kind donations of Folk Art items from the personal collections of several of the Avgorou residents, as well as the important Folk Art collection of the Pierides Foundation. This includes amongst others rare 19th century wood-carved furniture, priceless traditional textiles and embroideries of the 18th-19th century, costumes, silverware and pottery, a collection of nine paintings by the great Cypriot artist Michael Kassialos, as well as many other traditional utensils and tools. The collection - an invaluable tool for the studying of the different expressions of Cyprus Folk Art - and the family inheritance of the Pierides Foundation add up to the completed picture of a rich, urban household equipment of the last centuries. Moreover, the visitor of the museum has the opportunity to see the cultural and commercial relations of those years between Cyprus and the West, the East, and especially the relations of the island with the rest of the Greek islands.