About the company
Our company, that began its route back in 1969 with the creation of Ahtida handmade jewellery emerged from its founder’s love, Tasos Thomaides about the ”misunderstood” worry beads and his desire to restore the reputation of this particular object. So, combining the art of a silver-goldsmith with the unfailing desire to create, we elevate worry beads into a real piece of jewellery that can also be a collectible piece …in other words into an efhantro!
We are creating sterling silver and gold accessories for worry beads and jewellery. We choose natural materials, offering you the potential to combine them according to your taste, creating in this way your personal efhantro (worry beads) at the desirable price.
Our long term research in tradition and the continuous control of production starting from the design until the disposal of a piece of jewellery or worry beads (we call ours, efhantra), allows us to guarantee the aesthetics, originality, quality and lower costs.
Ιf you are a new fan of Efhantron, we will be happy to contact us for any question and we promise to share with you our knowledge. If you are a collector, … try us!
Besides the variety of our collections, we are able to carry out any project that you will assign us.
The artist
He was born at the district of refugees from Asia Minor, in Korinthos, in 1940. He has completed his studies in Tool Engineering, Mechanics in M.I.C. , drawing and painting in ABC College. He has also graduated from the so called “Small Technical University”. In 1967, he launches a gallery with works of popular art in Mykonos and begins to create copperplates, most of which were sold in 27 countries worldwide. His involvement with the copper leads him in 1969 to create handmade jewelry and with the assistance provided by his studies, he evolves to a self-taught gold-silversmith. Thus, Actida jewellery is created. Actida’s designs are inspired by mythology, tradition, nature, man. Actida jewellery is disseminated widely and a reporter, specialist in traditional art commented that “Τhe Actida Art Jewellery regenerates a more luminous Tradition”. After the end of dictatorship in Greece, he came to Athens and opened the store “Actida”, that still lays in 97 Solonos str. Driven by his passion for the “misunderstood” worry beads (kompoloi) he is led in a deeper study about it. So, through his many journeys he explores the history of hand garlands, their names, their relation with religion and everyday life of the people in each country and the evolvement of ways to use them. He is the first that sees worry beads as a piece of jewelry and sets off designing accessories of noble metals. The beads’ separators and the tassels funnels that he creates “refresh” the air around worry beads, known to those days Through these creations, he tries to restore its reputation in the public consciousness that has connected worry beads with poor laikotita and annoying knocking of the beads. In order to create a community of people who hold their worry beads in a respectful way and “caress them gently” while spreading this perception, leads to the creation at first of the Athenian Center of Kompoloi and some years later of the Club of Worry Beads. The great turning point comes in 2008 when Tasos Thomaidis names each hand garland according to its way of use and also gives a new name to his creation, the jewellery-garland. The new name is “efhantron”. Then the company will establish the name and will be finally renamed to EFHANTRON.