Christos Taltsidis started in the fur business when he was 13 in his native Greece sweeping floors, sewing small pieces of fur, breaking a lot of needles and getting his bosses upset.

He remembers those days fondly as he looks upon his own salon in Westchester.

Taltsidis, owner of Christos Fur Salon, 10407 W. Cermak Road, designs about 90 percent of his creations, and makes everything from fur coats to fur embellishments to wedding dresses.

“Pretty much anything with a surface I’ll cover, except metal,” he said. “I’ve made bed sheets, pillows, golf club covers. I make fur coats for dogs and cats, too.”

Before the 48-year-old Taltsidis opened his own shop he was the furrier for all of the Nordstrom stores, he said. He also worked for many major furriers in the Chicago area, including Evans Furs. When Evans closed its doors, Taltsidis bought all of their machines to outfit his own shop.

“You name it, I worked for them,” He said. “I can tell anybody what I learned from each furrier. Now I’m out on my own. I came out from under their shadows.”

He considers himself one of a dying breed, no pun intended. His home town is Kastoria. Located in the northern reaches of Greece, it means “beaver,” a tribute to the animals that made the town the epicenter of the European fur trade.

“If you look on a map it’s at the same latitude as Chicago,” he said. “There is a lake in the city. That’s why the fur business started there because of the beavers in the lake. All the master furriers in the world come from there. They mastered the art of furs.”

Mink is still the most popular of furs because as he said, it is the king of furs. And, he added, the best mink comes from the United States.

In all his years in the fur trade, Taltsidis said he has never had any run ins with animal rights groups over the use of animal hides for the clothing industry.

“No one has really bothered me my entire life. For 34 years, I never had to repair a mink coat that had paint on it,” referring to incidents where radical elements have attempted to shame fur wearers by throwing paint on them.

The youngest member of the Christos four-person team is 19-year-old Kateryna Kulchytska, who came to America from Ukraine in 2005.

Like Christos, she started learning her trade when she was about 13, working part time in her former country. This year she is a full time employee, learning from the master.

“It’s very interesting because a fur coat, to make one, takes a lot of patience, attention. It’s very interesting,” she said. “It usually takes two weeks, eight hours a day to make a long coat.”

As for her mentor, Kulchytska said she is in good hands.

“He’s a very good teacher,” she said. “He is very patient.”