d patched pieces of clothing hanging on the lines. Each house is about ten feet square and has one window, a dirt floor and a roof that is now beginning to leak.”
The village took its name Κουντουριώτικα from that of Admiral Pavlos Koundouriotis, the President of Greece who had granted public land behind the soccer stadium on Alexandras boulevard for the settlement. (See also http://www.mixanitouxronou.gr/pia-ine-afti-i-prosfigiki-gitonia-pou-sinedese-to-onoma-tis-me-ena-thriliko-gipedo-podosferou/)
From Thompson’s account we also learn about the workshop there. She writes:
Won’t you look into the workshop with me? The room, about twenty feet square, has no furnishing except benches. Forty women and girls are there, from eleven years up to any age where the woman has eyes to see. They are embroidering little Greek bags with designs taken from the old pottery of Rhodes, and in another room the cloth is woven by weavers who, in more happy days, wove their own material but never worked for others. Some are weaving beautiful natural silk into just the right width for scarfs, while others are weaving cotton into material for bags and dresses.
The raw silk and natural dies were brought from Kalamata and the silk dyed in Athens to match the colors of Rhodian pots and antique scarves. Lucy Shoe Meritt, who shared an apartment with Priscilla in 1928, reminisced in the obituary she wrote at the time of Priscilla’s death in 1985: “At the time she was running a shop for the Near East Relief… [the] motifs copied from pieces that Priscilla had found in the Greek Islands… Fortunate are those of us who have reproductions of some of these from her shop which was always popular with tourists” (ASCSA Newsletter, Spring 1986, p. 13).
In a second refugee village, another 100 women were working in Pangrati to produce handkerchiefs and “luncheon sets.” 250 women in Lesbos, 100 in Chios, 100 in Samos, 100 in Crete, and 300 in Thessaloniki also filled orders from the AFG.
Efforts by the AFG were soon absorbed by Near East Industries, while Priscilla Capps built bridges to other relief agencies too. I quote from a 1929 report of the Near East Foundation, submitted on the eve of the Great Depression:
“Miss Capps gives us a most remarkable report covering her work for the month of March . You will note that she is most confident in being able to continue the Industries without orders from America. With Mr. Acheson’s approval, Miss Capps has been loaned by the Near East Relief for two hours daily to organize the various refugee industries under the Refugee Settlement Commission. In this connection it is interesting to advise you of the fact that about 300 of our ex-orphan girls are employed by the Danish Mission work-shops. Their products are entirely of a different character than anything produced by Miss Capps’ workers and practically the entire output is sold in Denmark. These girls have clean, well-lighted work-rooms and Miss Yibson, the Director, is a Danish woman of the finest type. The girls have daily religious exercises before beginning their work and this one industry has done much to keep alive hundreds of Armenian families supported entirely by these ex-orphan girls.”
The Refugee Settlement Commission with which Priscilla Capps collaborated had been created by the League of Nations in September 1923 at the request of the Greek government, and was vested with full legal authority to coordinate resettlement of refugees. In 1924 her father, Edward Capps, had declined to serve as one of its four members because of other commitments.
Nonetheless, Edward Capps did continue his involvement in refugee affairs, albeit not to the extent of Priscilla’s. Most of the men employed between 1923 and 1925 in the construction of ASCSA’s Gennadius Library were refugees. Capps also raised funds to employ Greek men formerly held as prisoners in Turkey so that roads around the School could be improved. In 1925 he even proposed building a model women’s workshop with salvage timber from the construction of the Gennadius Library (Newberry Library, Horace S. Oakl