Gold Cufflinks

A pair of gold cufflinks, engraved with the initials G–T in a neoclassical script, given as a wedding gift to a prominent man from Alaya. The engraving technique, the symmetrical form, and the small spherical terminal indicate workshop manufacture from the early 20th century, as was common in Greek households in Alaya.
The present metal link is not the original: it was replaced in Nea Ionia around 1980, attesting to the object’s continued use and careful preservation by the family’s descendants after the uprooting.
The cufflinks are a characteristic example of men’s personal jewellery from Asia Minor, and a valuable family heirloom linking ancestral memory of Alaya with the lives of refugees in Greece.