«Keramos D.A.» complements forty and more years of continuing creative presence in the Greek and international market as a constructional enterprise in the sector of decoration and items of "popular art", starting on 1968 with the name «Χει�οτεχνική Ε.Ε.» (Handicraft). In the middle of the decade of seventies declares its presence in the area of the "popular jewel" with its main object the production of hand-made ceramic beads, and also the design of jewels, based on its own patents.

They have been already preceded serious attempts in a experimental - inquiring stage from 1965, with orientation the search of the aboriginal tradition through the systematic study of the ancient pre-historic beginning of time, and the discovery of the way of exploitation of this tradition, adaptively on the modern aesthetic admissions. The "Crafting" produced the whole spectrum of reflection, as for the basic principals that must be rule the new effort of resurgence of Greek exotic model and especially as for the relation between shape and content. It imported simultaneously completely new, worldwide original, practical techniques and methods of production, it devised the suitable mechanic equipment for the manufacture of beads of small cross-section, shaped the formal and aesthetic "model", took over the planning of new completed products, created new peculiar patterns with "archaic" profile, and also, resisted to the misprinted imitations and corruptions of its products, in order to protect the authentic character of a plain Greek product of particular claims. In a few words, "Crafting" was the new source of all the serious new proposals for the resurgence of the exotic "ideal type" and was possessing from the beginning a "pilot's" role in the constructional level for all the most new domestic crafts of adjacent activity on the type of ceramic bead, that have been established after it. Until today all the Greek laboratories, that with the one or the other way, have adopted and apply until today the new techniques for the production of the concrete type, are based on the patents and the aesthetic models of general direction of "Crafting".

«Keramos D.A.» was established on 1982 and constitutes the successor legal form of the pre-existing constructional enterprise. Incorporates in its assets all the previous experience that have developed in the most optimal point, promoting its new patents in many levels. It devised for example new type of mechanic equipment and developed new original methods for the production of hand-made plain or enameled ceramic beads and jewels. The technique of plating constituted an important innovation, with ways that allow the imprinting of artistic detail on small-embossed ceramic objects of small caliber. The plating of the ceramic breads represents one of the higher achievements of «Keramos D.A.» and it constitutes the most important offer in the Greek market, through the frames of its attempts for the appointment of the purely Greek products in the sector of the "exotic" jewel crafting.

«Keramos D.A» is a clearly craft-based enterprise and is particularly reliable on the qualitative specifications of its products. Today it produces over than 1000 kinds of ceramic or plated beads and more than 6000 kinds of metallic elements of decoration and jewels. «Keramos» is the first manufacturing company of this type in whole Greece that created and included in the productive chain a specialized designing department, staffed from graduate designers. By this way it always maintains the precedence in the presentation of new peculiar collections. The composition and the style of its creations are unique, because each completed jewel maintains the characteristics of a hand-made craft, combining elements from the ancient tradition with the modern aesthetic perceptions.

«Keramos D.A.», always pioneer of the ideas and the renewing efforts, is the only Greek industry that organizes and applies with consequence specialized programs for the reformation of the Greek "exotic" jewel. Moreover, it determines the cycle of its works according to its own original products. So, it has the facility to be addressed to the Greek or international market with specifications of wholesale disposal and real prices of laboratory.

«Keramos D.A» accommodates its productive operations exclusively in its own buildings, almost 2.000 sq m in Greece and abroad, and allocates its own modern equipment for the entire spectrum of the production of ceramic, plated, bronze, molten beads and accessories. Apart from the industrial installations, it also allocates two service stations for the disposal of its products in Athens and Sofia.

The tradition in "exotic" jewel
The extempore hand-made jewel attracts its origin from the animistic societies and is interwoven by the first attempts of people to ensure the basic principals of the intellectual and artistic creation. The idea of the animated nature and everything that accompanies it, in a primary "conjectural" level, is arising generally from the pre-historic populations and never exceeds the limits of realistic satisfaction of simple functional needs, as they are determined by the conditions of the natural consumerism. In spite of these, the, without artistic intentions, "primitive" expression is immersed into the luxuriant energy of nature, its controversial and pageantry. So, each creation of that age indicate a fundamental model of behavior and especially, an (an-)aesthetic model, which, in the artistic level, recommends a situation of freedom, harmonized in the existing organizational forms and the self-adjusting tendency of the natural environment. Moreover, this is the deepest content of the exotic culture, meaning its naturalistic reality that continues to attract us and suggest us to follow its model.

In Greece, the ancient clues of decoration (from sea shells) are originated from the district of west Laconia and they are dated almost from twenty thousand years ago. The decoration of the face and the body gained a special social importance in the middle of the sixth millennium before today, at the same time with the appearance of the Neolithic "hairstyle" in the district of Aegean, from the beginning of which the urban culture starts to form and distinguish from the culture of the "regional" societies, that live out of the territory of the pre-historic "acropolis", maintaining many of the habits of the old naturalistic way of life. In the environment of these non-urban human aggregations is founded the tradition of the Greek "popular jewel", a tradition that continues to reproduce its "archetype" during centuries with unique formal and artistic references in every historical period, but also with important modifications in its techniques and symbolisms, without loosing its essential content, that is, the unaffected expression of the naturally beautiful in opposition to the unnaturally ornate jewel of the "cultivated" urban typology. Only in the period of the Modern Greek "rebirth" the ancient model begins to decline until it finally gives its place to the associated products of the "massive sub-culture", based on the industrialized synthetic materials. In the middle of twentieth century the last trace of the old expert's practice has been completely eliminated and its only traced residues are found in the animals' dressing, the so-called "talismans" with the "donkey beads". This kind constitutes a point of punctuation and reference to the resurgence of the unaffected hand-made "popular" jewel during postwar tourist folklore, with some elementary references to the examples of the exotic tradition.

The first rudimentary domestic laboratories, which are dealing in the construction of ceramic beads in connection with the so-called touristic "false jewel", are already presented in the decade of seventies in the most downgraded social areas of the Athenian suburbs. The products of these small laboratories are based on the occasional inventiveness, the unsophisticated improvisation and the uncultured imagination of the self-established domestic expert, who has not any contact with the deposits of the past. The techniques are used in this stage are corresponding to the results of the early literary work attempts and are depending more on the plastic faculty of the unskilled hand and not on the tried experience and knowledge of the systematic popular expert, whose performed skills and experiences are comprehended and exist only as an extension of a particular process of transmitting tradition. As basic materials are used the roasted argil and the enamel of ceramics, supplementing them with glass, well-turned brass and pigskin. However, the not standardized hand-made jewel, with these insufficient conditions, returns to delimit its own space in contradistinction to the "popularized" faux bijou that constitutes a worthless and impersonal substitute type of standardized decoration for the simple daily person.