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The great-grandson of a sponge diver
Thirty years on the harbour at Yialos, telling people which sponge they actually need.
Sponge diving built this island, and it built this shop. Pantelis's great-grandfather went down in the canvas suit and the brass helmet, in the years when sponges were not a souvenir on Symi but the whole economy of it.
His grandfather went to sea too, in the merchant navy rather than under it. His father, Panormitis, opened the shop, and gave it his name.
The boats are gone. The trade is not.
If you have stood in front of the baskets on the harbour, you have already seen where your order comes from.
How the shop got here
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A great-grandfather goes down in the suit
The years when sponge diving was the whole economy of Symi, and the fleet went out from this harbour every spring.
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His son goes to sea, not under it
Pantelis’s grandfather was a sailor in the merchant navy. The family stayed with the sea and left the diving behind.
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Panormitis opens the shop on Yialos
A single door on the waterfront, selling sponges cut and cleaned by hand, and explaining the difference between them to anyone who asked.
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The first parcel leaves the island
It went out on 18 May, in a spring when nobody was arriving. People who had been to Symi before wrote asking for another sponge, and we started posting them.
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A second shop, a few metres along
Panormitis opened a second door on the same side of the square, because one could no longer serve everyone who came through on a summer morning.
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A third shop, across the square
Opened by Pantelis, Panormitis’s son, with the same baskets and the same questions.
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The same sponges, wherever you are
Parcels leave all winter now, to people who will probably never stand at the counter, and get the same sponge, chosen the same way.
Why we talk so much
People come in asking for “a sponge” and leave with something quite specific. One is for a newborn. One is for a painter. One is for somebody who actually sits in the bath and wants a sponge big enough to matter.
Explaining the difference is most of what happens in this shop, and it has been for thirty years. It is also why people write back years later. Not because they remember the shop, but because they remember being told which one to buy.
This website is an attempt to have that conversation with somebody who cannot come to the counter.
Where the sponges come from
They arrive raw and unbleached, exactly as they came out of the sea. We clean them, cut away what cannot be used, and trim each one by hand.
Nothing is dyed. Nothing is chemically whitened. That is why the colour varies from one sponge to the next, and why the one that arrives will not be the one in the photograph. There is no such thing as the one in the photograph.
Still a shop, not a warehouse
Your order is packed by the same person who sells sponges over the counter, on an island where the post leaves by ferry.
That is slower than a warehouse and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It is also why you can write to us and get an answer from somebody who has actually held the sponge you bought.