Island village keeps tradition of marble sculpture alive

Yiannis Hondroyiannis knew how to use a hammer and chisel at the age of 7. "I learned all about marble and its secrets in my father's workshop. I would go to the School of Marble Sculpture after regular school and have worked with marble ever since I graduated," says one of many marble sculptors in Pyrgos, a village on the Aegean island of Tinos renowned for the craft, which dates back hundreds of years here. Like so many others, Hondroyiannis took up the profession of his father and his father before him.

With the craft passed down through dozens of generations, it comes as little surprise that the village resembles an open-air museum. Family crests on snow-white houses, iconostases, public fountains, signs and smaller objects all reveal that marble is an intrinsic part of life in what is Tinos's second-biggest settlement after the main town, Hora.

Hondroyiannis runs...