Garlands of hands
The Indian garland Japamala
According to tradition, 2500 to 2800 years ago in Northern India, a spiritual student had to say 108 prayers although he didn't know how to count. To help him say all the prayers, his master thought of piercing 108 pimples, passing them on a cord and tie the cord's ends.
Thus was born the tool - garland by which we can do a specific number of prayers without count them.
By this garland the praying man can say a prayer every time he touches a puddle so when the prayer man had touched all the puddles, he knew he had said the right number of prayers.
This garland is considered by folklore to be the first tool to measure a certain number of prayers.
The Indians call this garlad as Japamala
Begleri beads
When the underworld and the non-aligned in society people, “met” tesbihi, they were affected by it and inspired their own garland. They put 16 beads in a strand, tied it at both ends and hung there anything someone desired. Some used one bead, others put two beads or a cross or a charm. The beads were from casual materials. They twirled this garland in their hand like an airplane’s propeller. Once clockwise and once counter-clockwise. Then they would stop the rotations and knock some of the beads on the other. This garland was named begleri beads because they did it with raffish gesture like the gamers of tavli shake the dice in their hands (verb beglerao). Today it is called kompoloi.
The Greek youngsters of the 80’s created their own object to keep their hands busy. It was a strand about 15 cm long, that they had put two beads. They would put it between their fingers, shook their hand and thus forced the beads to knock on each other and heard the sounds of the collision. It was named Taka-Taka after the sound. Today it is called begleri beads. Each garland we hold either to make prayers, or to keep our hands busy, for meditation, for showing off, for prestige we call them all...
Komboloi and efhantron
Our company EFHANTROΝ has created and suggests a new type of garland – jewelry that is basically used as an anxiolytic accessory without any side effects! Men, women and children of any age can keep one. This garland – jewelry is consisted of natural crystal beads full of positive energy, of silver and golden elements. It’s a work of Art expressing the Greek aesthetics, culture and civilization.
It has been created by the artist Tasos Thomaidis. Tasos Thomaidis named his creation εύχαντρον (efhantron). The word means beads that are pleasant. It’s a compound word that consists of the word εύ (ef) =anything good or pleasant, and the word χάντρα (hantra)=bead. When he “came across” with the prayer beads (worry beads or komboloi in Greek) he was impressed and the result was to make pieces of jewelry – efhantra. He was inspired by the Greek traditional designs that with his talent he tranformed and applied in the accessories and combined them with natural and precious materials.
We believe that our approach to the traditional komboloi, converts it into a special object which may function as:
• A medium for artistic expression, expressing aesthetic concerns and using many different...