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Basket weaving

As one of the Cretans' time-honoured arts, basket weaving led to the creation of many artefacts, whether of a practical or purely decorative nature.

Working with cane, flexible branches and occasionally corn stalks as their main raw material, basket weavers used great dexterity to make baskets of all shapes and sizes (kofes, kofinia and paneria) for transporting and storing harvested produce such as grapes, olives and figs, as well as in cheese making, in which shepherds set the soft white cheese called myzithra in baskets known as toupia.