This Greek terracotta workshop produces mythical figures, deities and beasts. See pics

Terracotta statues are a rare survival of a vanishing art in recession-plagued Greece.

Haralambos Goumas is a man who fashions gods out of clay — a reversal of most ancient creation myths in which the gods make the men. Over the past half-century, Goumas, 67, has produced thousands of large terracotta statues of ancient Greek deities, mythical figures and fabulous beasts, mostly for use as architectural and garden ornaments.

They are a rare survival of a vanishing art in recession-plagued Greece, all made by hand using traditional techniques in a western Athens workshop squeezed in among warehouses, small industries and a railyard. “I guess that in my lifetime I have made many more statues than those in China’s Terracotta Army,” Goumas told the Associated Press.

Goumas touches a terracotta statue of Hermes, messenger of the ancient Greek gods, at his workshop.

Terracotta statues, busts, antefixes and flower pots stands in the yard of Goumas' workshop.

Like the 2,200-year old, life-sized sculptures of about 9,000 soldiers and imperial officials dug up in northwestern China, many of Goumas’ pieces stand in tidy ranks, in a yard fronting the long, metal-roofed shed with its old-fashioned wood-fired furnace where he works. Others are scattered apparently randomly: an Athena here, a horse or a satyr there, among bulls’ heads, griffins, sphinxes, garden urns or busts of 5th-century B.C. Athenian philosopher Socrates and the 19th-century Greek poet Dionysios Solomos. There’s even a Christ somewhere.

A pickup track drives on a street of Athens carrying a terracotta statue of Zeus, chief among the ancient Greek gods, made by Goumas.

Although past retirement age, Goumas hopes to continue working and at the same time to create a school for young artists on the site, provided he can raise the necessary funds.

The tenth of 12 children, Goumas was born next to the workshop — initially his father’s porcelain fittings business — that was still surrounded by vineyards and orchards, with the Acropolis dominating the landscape to the east. All his brothers worked there at some point, though he is the only one to have persevered. “It’s very hard, physically demanding work,” he said. “It’s not so easy to breathe in the smoke from the furnace, or lift these very heavy statues — some weigh 100 kilograms and the moulds can reach 300 kilograms.”

Although past retirement age, Goumas hopes to continue working and at the same time to create a school for young artists on the site, provided he can raise the necessary funds. “Then I’ll never have to leave this place,” he said. “I have made so many gods that I believe one or other will help me. (Otherwise,) what did I make them all for?”

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