Café Platris

A man of the military rank, Rudyerd was an amateur artist who came to Cyprus with the arrival of the British in 1878. This watercolour depicts a rather familiar scene of men sitting leisurely outside the coffeshop of Platres village, a mountain resort on Troodos. The social institution of the coffee shop was introduced to Cyprus in Ottoman times and all villages, including the smallest ones, featured at least one. The coffee shop provided an all male domain of public discourse and an avenue for the management of public affairs. Women were not only excluded from it but they were actually prohibited from crossing the square in front of it. The watercolour stresses this very aspect of a male dominated society as manifest in the absence of women from the picture. Moreover, it comments on the unproblematic relationship between Greeks and Turks in the coffeshop as representatives of both communities appearing sharing the same table. The Greeks appear in blue vrakes or baggy trousers whereas the Turks are depicted in white ones. Another dimension of coffeshop life given by the picture is its leisurely character illustrated by details such as the nargile, card playing and zivania drinking.