Darwin Revisited

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed

Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

From ‘Ulysses’, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

South end of Mall facing Waterfront

Unlike Ulysses most people can rest from travel. However before the ‘rest from travel’ are the places on the journey which are strung together like beads on a string. These places often have nothing in common. It is as if the string of beads had been fashioned by a mad, wayward child - precious stones and bits of rubbish collected and randomly strung together.

Darwin is a bead on the string of my journey. It is a small complex nugget that changes with the light, the angle of vision, the seasons.

Australia’s northernmost city does not face north to Beagle Gulf and beyond to the Timor Sea. Situated on the end of a south facing peninsular Darwin is tucked into Darwin Harbour. The harbour is approximately 20 miles (32 kms) long with several deep arms branching from the main body. It is such a vast and complex environment that a twelve day fishing tour offered by a local company does not guarantee more than a taste of the area.

Twenty years ago the last journey through Darwin was to enter Australia with eight suitcases and two children, the noise of the crowded marketplaces of Asia still echoing in our minds. Beyond the airport perimeter Darwin lay sweltering and abandoned in the buildup to the Wet. As we exited the plane onto the tarmac, perspiration sprang from our pores. Within seconds we were saturated. The air was so thick each breath was like inhaling hot soup.

Public Art Darwin

Darwin during the Dry season is a different town. Darwin two decades later is also a different town. It still straggles around the peninsular, its multiracial inhabitants are still friendly and easygoing. But the city’s population has almost doubled. Taxi drivers are now long term residents, not geologists, anthropologists and archaeologists waiting for the next mining boom. And public art litters the sidewalks and parks. Like many northern Australian towns, time has been kind to Darwin, and tourism even kinder.

This is a town rich in history, with layers of occupation going back at least forty thousand years. It is a town that sits lightly on its foundations. The few remaining historic buildings have been rebuilt after the ravages of disease, wartime bombing and cyclones.

Darwin mall - criticised when it was first opened as being inappropriate for the climate, considered a
‘southern’, alien development - is crowded. People sip coffee al fresco, wander through the art and souvenir shops, photograph each other outside the historic Victoria hotel.

In 1888, Ellen Ryan, one of the richest people in the Northern Territory contracted a local builder to begin work on the North Australia Hotel . It’s name was changed six years after opening to the Victoria. The Vic Hotel was the first building in Darwin constructed from the local multi-coloured porcellanite stone. The hotel has survived several cyclones, the bombing of Darwin and rioting between occupying forces during the Second World War.

It has been a focal point for political and social activity throughout the past 120 years of history in the Territory. In 1908 the first motorists to cross Australia from south to north stayed at the Vic and in 1915 with political turmoil and union unrest threatening what eventually culminated in the Darwin Rebellion, the Vic and several other hotels were ‘nationalised’ by the Northern Territory Administrator.

Darwin Mall

In 1920 Ellen Ryan sold the hotel to Christina Gordon who turned it into a first class hotel and required men to wear jackets in the dining room. As air routes between Australia and the Northern Hemisphere developed the Vic hosted most of those involved. In 1919 pilots from the England to Australia air race stayed there as did those that followed during the pioneering days of air travel.

During the Second World War United States and Australian naval personnel stayed at the hotel, which was damaged during riots by troops stationed in Darwin in 1941.

On 19 February 1942 the same Japanese fleet that bombed Pearl Harbour in Hawaii bombed Darwin. More bombs were dropped on Darwin than on Pearl Harbour and at least 243 people were killed and the entire town damaged. Further bombing on the town continued but the Victoria Hotel suffered little damage.

In 1946 the hotel was sold to the Lim family who operated it until 1965. During that period crocodile shooters, buffalo hunters and mining prospectors took over as the main customers of the hotel.

On Christmas Day 1974 the hotel lost its roof for the third time to the third major cyclone in the hotel’s history when Cyclone Tracey destroyed or damaged 95% of the city and killed 71 people.

As the entire town had to be rebuilt after Tracey it was four years before the Vic was reopened.

Victoria Hotel Darwin

Today the hotel hosts many of the huge numbers of tourists who have discovered the Top End over the past decade.

From the Vic in the mall it is a short walk to The Esplanade.

On the walk to The Esplanade a visit to Lyons Cottage is a pleasant diversion. Built in 1925 it was originally home to the company engineer of the Eastern Extension Australasian and China Telegraph Company Ltd. This company was the successor to the British Australian Telegraph Company (BAT) and laid cable between Australia and Java.

Lyons Cottage was built in stone – a wise decision in a white ant infested and cyclone prone area.

Today it displays historical photos of Darwin and houses an Aboriginal crafts association that sells handicrafts from around the region.

The quality and beauty of the items on sale evoke a surge of regret at the very small bag that, of necessity, accompanies me on this trip.

Mementoes of Aviation Link to Victoria Hotel Darwin

The professionalism of the staff, their open friendly manner are a wonderful welcome back to the area.

Memories of stays in Darwin over several years flood back as I walk down to the refurbished Esplanade.

Right along the Esplanade from Knuckey Street and the Novotel Atrium hotel is a block away. The clear sky and the sparkling water of the harbour are overlaid by memories of watching from the then Atrium Hotel huge thunderheads sweep across the harbour. They heralded violent thunderstorms that culminated in evening lightning displays that seemed to crack the night apart. Below, along the beach, crocodiles were reported to sun themselves or go for forays into the harbour.

Today the number of people using the beach and park area would not encourage any crocodile save the most foolhardy to slide up onto the beach.

On the point, bounded by Herbert Street and Harry Chan Avenue are places that have been the site of events that changed the course of history of the area.

Lyons Cottage Darwin

In 1869 Charles Darwin had become an unpopular figure in England and when George Goyder, Surveyor-General of the Colony of South Australia, arrived in a coastal barque to establish a new settlement he re- named the area "Palmerston", after that great believer in gunboat diplomacy and forced Irish emigration, the then late Lord Palmerston.

Fortunately for all, except of course the 500 Larrakia people who were displaced by Goyder when he established the site of the settlement, in 1911 the town reverted to the name of Darwin.

Observer
24 November 2010

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Interiors

Window

The architect I. M. Pei said, “...people do not stay outside looking at buildings when it is hot ... .[In the Arab world]. ..exteriors are severe, [but the] interiors [are] ... beautiful ... a remarkable variety of patterns and lighting.’

Pei’s touch is always light, his historical references always subtle.  As Oliver Watson says, Pei’s design is ‘accessible ... to those who know about history, and to those who do not...’

The Museum seems to glitter in the mid-day heat.  Instead of an external dome the building is topped by a cube reminiscent of the Middle Eastern wind tower.

In countries where wood suitable to use for spanning large spaces was unavailable, where brick, stone and marble were the building materials, the arch and the dome dictated the development of architecture.

Pei has used the arch to emphasize, not interrupt, the planar exterior of his building design and as a subtle reminder of its architectural heritage.  The simple roman arch, the horse shoe arch, the delicate pointed arch that for many is identified with Islam, all are traced lightly on the external surfaces.

Shadows at Entrance to Museum

It is only the slit like modernist elliptical arches cut into the tower that offer relief from the glare.  Deeply shadowed they are like the eyes of a warrior, protected by a helmet.

Fountain in atrium

At the museum entrance the perspiring visitor treads through bars of shadows that pattern the ground, walks through the massive glass doors and is halted by the shock of the interior. 

The momentary suspension of sensation lifts.  The skin cools, eyes adjust to the absence of glare, voices welcome the visitor.

Beyond the shadowed reception area is a light-filled atrium space, partly illuminated by a 45 metre-high tinted glass window revealing the salt-laden Gulf that surrounds Qatar on three sides.

Looking up to internal faceted dome

The newcomer is immediately drawn to the window, but on looking back across the atrium realizes that there is no position from which this space looks best.  Through his use of stone, concrete, glass, steel and marble Pei has provided a sculptural space in which the visitor is enclosed by, and becomes part of, pattern and light and geometrical variety.

A black marble fountain delineates the space in front of the window. 

Beyond the fountain the eye is drawn upward to the stainless steel faceted internal dome through the oculus of which pours more daylight.

Chandelier below dome and over staircase

Here Pei has played with geometry.  “From circle to octagon to square to four triangular flaps that angle back at different heights to become the atrium’s column supports,” is the description given in Watson’s book.  Yet this array of shapes and angles soars away from the eye.  It is intriguing, never confusing; revealing not obscuring. 

Glass bridges connecting balconies

Below the centre of the dome the floor is inlaid with intricate patterns and a curved double staircase sweeps upward to the U-shaped balconies that are cantilevered around the atrium. 

Between staircase and dome hangs a circular ‘chandelier’ that glows even in this light filled space.

From the top of the staircase the light seems liquid and the glass bridges that connect the balconies become bridges of light on which human figures float in luminous streams.

There is time now, before entering the galleries, before departing this space to go back down the stairs, buy a coffee and sit at one of the tables overlooking the gulf, abandon all thought and merge into this radiance.

Observer

Sunday, 29 August 2010

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Ref:

Watson, Oliver, Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar, Prestel Verlag Munich.

Light and Heat in Qatar

Qatar vies with Lichtenstein for the position as the richest country in the world. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Emir of the State of Qatar, came to power through a bloodless coup in 1995. His accession was a turning point for the country. The Sheikh has proclaimed his intention to make his country a centre for culture and education. His second wife Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani has been active in helping him achieve this goal. In November 2008 The Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar was opened.

Corniche Doha, Qatar

It is 10.30 in the morning. The temperature outside is 44⁰C with the promise of increasing heat. The plane thuds on to the tarmac and hurtles to a stop in the richest city on earth.

The passengers, oil workers and their families returning from shopping trips to the Emirates, disembark and charge into the dust and heat haze, leaving the lone tourist alone to savour the moment of arrival in a new city.

Parkland facing Museum of Islamic Art Qatar

The hotel shuttle bus driver seems bemused, but enthusiastic, at the idea of the city as a tourist destination.

The trip to the hotel through a tangle of streets lined with crumbling concrete buildings is blocked intermittently by orange and white plastic barricades. Behind these barricades crowds of indentured Asian labourers shovel dirt out of ditches.

The first impression of the city is that the Qataris cannot be accused of flaunting their extraordinary wealth, although

Doha, Qatar’s capital, does have the usual collection of odd-shaped glass-clad high rise buildings and a dust shrouded tower to celebrate the 2006 Asian Games.

On the southern tip of the crescent-shaped bay, at the end of the corniche along which the working men are not allowed to walk, is the jewel in Qatar’s crown.

What a jewel it is. The first sign that true progress has come to the country. The next day, the driver points out the new education and medical precincts - further proof that money is being spent wisely in this country.


But it is the breathtakingly beautiful Qatar Museum for Islamic Arts that has placed Doha on the international map.

This building is I. M. Pei’s design and proof that the creative process burns deeply and strongly to the end of the artistic life.

Entrance to Museum of Islamic Art Doha

I.M. Pei has many great projects in his portfolio, but is probably best known for his controversial upgrading of the Louvre precinct in Paris which opened in 1989.

The story of I. M. Pei’s quest for ‘the essence of Islamic architecture’ is told and re-told in the Middle East. Cordoba in Spain, Fatehpur Sikri in India, the Great Mosque in Damascus, the fort at Sousse in Tunisia, were visited by the architect,but none of these inspired him to begin his design. Finally he came upon the simple lines of an ablution fountain in a Cairo mosque and from this drew the inspiration for the Doha museum.

I. M. Pei's Museum of Islamic Art Qatar

The museum is located on a man- made island sixty metres from shore. It is a stripped back, almost minimalist design which does evoke images of the ninth century ablutions fountain in the mosque of Ahmad ibn Tulun in Cairo. But the building is more than an evocation of early Islamic architecture.

Pei has embraced the harsh light and heat of the Arabian peninsula.  The sharply defined facets of the building enhance the interaction not just of light and shade, but of variations of light and shade and the interplay of watery reflections.

As the temperature soars beyond 48 degrees, the water shimmers beneath heat waves, and the building invites the traveller to enter into a promise of a vast cool interior.

Museum of Islamic Art Qatar

Observer
16 August 2010
email:  longline8@gmail.com
Longlines - http://longline8.blogspot.com/

Death, Religion and Family in Venice

The church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (the Frari) was established in the 1230s. Within the church the three motifs threading through the lagoon’s history unite to reveal the uniquely Venetian aspects of death, religion and family.

Linked to the Frari collection is Titian’s Pièta in the Accademia Galleries in Venice. The Pièta is not only the culmination of a life of artistic work but a profound reminder of the transience of life and of the basic fear upon which the republic was founded.

Heliodorus the fourth century Bishop of Altinum retired with St Marcellus to live out his life on the lagoon island of Marcelliana. Heliodorus was only one of the many early Christian recluses who sought isolation on those low islands which offered a space for contemplation and prayer in the everchanging light between sky and sea, between East and West.

The hermits were followed by two waves of refugees fleeing death at the hands of invaders.

Settlements built in swamps are vulnerable to disease and environmental hazards.

In the centuries following the first refugee settlement in the lagoon, flooding destroyed some of the islands and silting of the channels encouraged mosquito borne disease. Outbreaks of malaria forced whole communities to relocate to other islands. When the settlers regrouped the communities which today make up Venice were established.

The hermit tradition encouraged a separation between Church and State. Wealthy families supported the work of monks and nuns, and the building of churches. As the Venetian community grew, political authority was developed so that no one family controlled the State.

However Venetian wealth and power was built on fragile foundations.

No sooner were the ravages of malaria brought under control than the first plague pandemic swept through Europe in 1346.

For the following 333 years Europe was subjected to waves of plague outbreaks. By 1400 the continent’s population had been halved by the disease which attacked in three forms. The most common form was bubonic which killed 80% of sufferers. The other two forms, septacemic and pneumonic, had almost a 100% death rate.

Albert Camus in his allegorical novel about the Nazi occupation of France describes the symptoms of bubonic plague:

Between 1361 and 1528 (part of the period of the second plague pandemic) there were 22 outbreaks of plague in Venice. During an outbreak between 1575 and 1577 fifty thousand (one third) of Venice’s inhabitants were killed by the disease.

At the end of the fifteenth century or the beginning of the sixteenth as another plague outbreak began to spread through Europe, ten year old Tiziano Vercellio (Titian) and his brother Francesca set out from their home village of Pieve di Cadore high in the Dolomite mountains to begin apprenticeships with the Bellini family in Venice.

By 1516 Titian was recognised as the master of Venetian painting, a position he maintained for the next sixty years.

His work for the church of the Frari was the foundation upon which his reputation was based.

Behind the plain, imposing late Gothic facade of the Frari is a classic Latin cross-shaped space filled with light.

Within the gilded frames and marble niches of the church are no idealised portraits of semi-divine creatures immersed in religiosity but strong, determined people existing in an uncertain world.

The saints are grounded in the reality of the artist’s times. Bernardino Licino’s group in Virgin Mary and Saints (1524) in which St Clare, austere and observant and St Francis, ironic and knowing, flank a concerned Bonaventura are good examples.  Giambatista Pittoni’s Hagar, vulnerable and weeping in Hagar in the Desert (18th Century) is another.

In Titian’s Assunta (1516-1518) the virgin, her body thickened by childbearing, her tragic life stamped on her features is absorbed, afraid yet resigned, into the afterlife. She may be being elevated to the divine but she remains a woman of the earth.
Titian’s touchingly young Madonna of Ca Pesaro (1519-1526) struggles to restrain her rebellious infant and, interrupted in her maternal duties, turns, polite yet impatient, to acknowledge the obeisance of the retinue of Jacopo Pesaro.

In the chapel of the Milanese Alvise Vivarini (1503) shows St Ambrose’s careworn face imbued with gentle concern. Bartolomeo Vivarini’s St Mark (1474) is alert to events beyond the frame as he raises a hand in an admonitory blessing.

Donatello’s statue of an emaciated St John the Baptist is formidable. Transfigured by self-mortification and dressed in animal skin John the Baptist raises a hand that does not admonish the viewer. It merely draws attention to this embodiment of the illusory nature of earthly reward, the fragility of body and mind, the inevitability of death and of whatever lies beyond.

Beyond the Presbytery and Chapels inside the Frari, the massive funerary monuments that line either side of the aisle are a reminder of how important death has been in Venice.

Titian was the only plague victim to be buried in a church, but his funerary monument was not erected until the 1850s.

His Pièta, unfinished when Titian died on 27th August 1576 was intended for the Frari. It is now in the Accademia and is a magnificent, awe inspiring work.



Gone are the glorious skies, the vivid colours of the Frari Madonnas.

Within the ruined claustrophobic space of the Pièta man confronts death at the outbreak of plague.  Reduced by age and the depredations of disease, he begs for eternal salvation, while Mary Magdelan gestures furiously at an inevitable fate.  The Venetian lion, helpless and turned to stone, grimaces in fear.

This is the end of the Venetian blogs for the time being. Dante, a Florentine, who used the image of the Venetian Arsenal to help describe Hell, will have the last word.

Observer
Sunday, 25 July 2010
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Email: longline8@gmail.com

References:
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 1879, Project Gutenberg.
F. C. Hodgson, An Early History of Venice, 1901, Project Gutenberg.
Albert Camus, The Plague, Penguin Books 1947.
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), The Inferno, www.worldofdante.org

Something to Consider

A computer crash has delayed the last of the Venice blog posts. for this I apologise. However in the meantime I recommend readers to look at the blogs I follow.

There is the gorgeous visual record of John and Gail Cross' travels and place of residence in 'John and Gail in UAE'. Then there is Ann Alcock's equally engaging yet totally different approach to photography in PhotoVoice Australia.

Margo Tesch in 'Spring Creek Station' gives the reader an insight into life in rural Australia. Jo Burton's snippets in 'Footloose with Jo' talk about life travelling and in Malta and are always thought provoking.

Make a cup of coffee and spend a bit of time reading Bryce Alcock's reflections on literature and the literary life in 'The Echidna and the Fox' and add to your wish list of reading matter at the same time.

Observer
Longlines - http://longline8.blogspot.com/

Torcello

The islands of the Venetian lagoon have been populated for millennia.  The lagoon is a productive fish habitat and a beneficial environment for a large range of shellfish.  The salt marshes provide nesting and over-wintering sites for over 60 species of aquatic birds, the largest population of water birds in Italy.  Long before the Romans, fishermen and fowlers inhabited the islands.

Torcello is often portrayed in literature as a place of refuge, enlightenment or respite before the confusion, the harshness of reality descends on a character.  For example Du Maurier’s characters in “Don’t Look Now” experience a brief respite from confusion and sadness while on the island.  Ignoring the messages offered to him on Torcello sets the protagonist on the path to certain death.

In “The Stones of Venice” Ruskin’s pose as the superior, expert judge of all things Venetian can be irritating beyond belief.  His many errors of fact and interpretation -  for example he was blind to the presence of Burano and Mazzorbo a few hundred metres across the water from Torcello - have engendered fury in his critics.  But there is, beneath the pose and the elaborate phraseology, a humanitarian instinct and a vision that makes reading his book worthwhile.  His lyrical description of Torcello begins: 

Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, ..., attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea. One of the feeblest of these inlets,... stays itself ... beside a plot of greener grass covered with ground ivy and violets. On this mound is built a rude brick campanile, of the commonest Lombardic type,

This “rude brick campanile” is the bell tower of the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta.

Long before the bell tower was built, long before Christianity came to Italy people inhabited the marsh islands. 

By 100 A.D. grand Roman holiday villas were situated on Torcello.  Torcello first rose to prominence as a refuge for the people of the mainland escaping the invasion of the Huns in 452 A.D.  By 466 the first steps toward a united community in the lagoon islands had been set up.  

Torcello was abandoned within a few generations of the signing of this agreement because an earthquake in Northern Italy generated a tidal wave that flooded Torcello and sent the survivors fleeing back to the mainland or to other island communities.

When the Lombards invaded Northern Italy in 568 A.D. refugees fled once again to Torcello.  This time they stayed. 

By the time the building of the cathedral began in 639 A.D. a monastery and the lagoon’s first nunnery (both dedicated to St John) had been established. 

Over the following centuries with their rise in fortunes the inhabitants of Torcello extended the cathedral until by the end of the first millennium A.D. it looked very much as it does today.    

The bell tower was built at this time and the building of Santa Fosca church, a martyrium to house the saint’s remains, had begun.

Torcello became a hub of industry, an important port, a link between Italy and the Adriatic, and interestingly, a glass-making centre.

It was on Torcello that Venetian-style glassmaking developed from the earlier Roman techniques which were first employed on the island. These skills were then transferred to Venice and from Venice to Murano.  Murano later became a centre of glassmaking and, for a time, a world leader in the development of a range of glassmaking styles and techniques.

In the twelfth and thirteenth century the exquisite mosaics for which the basilica of Santa Maria Assunta is world famous were installed.  Although Torcello was producing glass at that time research shows that the original glass used for the mosaics was produced in the Levant and then reworked at Torcello.

In the 1300s Torcello was abandoned because of silting in the lagoon and outbreaks of malaria.  As Venice increased in power and prosperity Torcello declined and its buildings were demolished, the materials moved to the rising star of the lagoon, for building materials were scarce and expensive in that watery environment.

The low lying open space of Torcello gives it a tranquil atmosphere that has drawn many famous writers.

Hemingway was one.  He wrote “Across the River and Into the Trees” during a stay on this island in 1949. 

But it is a lesser known writer whose comments about Torcello and its inhabitants who most appeals to me. W. D. Howells visited Torcello during his period as American Consul in the 1860s.  He wrote about this experience in “Venetian Life”.    His quote is in blue print.

His observations about his visit to Torcello contrast with those disappointed comments about the island by Henry James, and the remarks about Burano by the anonymous author of the New York Times article of 1880.

Torcello has a Devil’s Bridge over a small canal.  It is probably so called because it has no hand rails.  A visitor after indulging too well at Torcello's Locanda Cipriani, a restaurant almost as famous, and expensive, as Florian’s in St Marks Square, could well topple into the canal from the bridge.

Today Torcello is as Ruskin, James and so many others described it:  an island barely above sea level with a small group of buildings which includes the Basilica, the church and the belltower at one end, with a small population of guards, guides and souvenir sellers who welcome the visitor.  It is easy to imagine staying there for an extended period, observing the rise and fall of the tide, the cycle of the seasons beneath those open skies.

Observer
9 June 2010
email: longline8@gmail.com
Ref: 
W.D. Howell, "Venetian Life", 1867.
F.C. Hodgson, "The Early History of Venice" 
John Ruskin, "The Stones of Venice", 1879

Henry James, "Italian Hours" 1909
Ernest Hemingway, "Across the River and Into the Trees" Jonathan Cape, 1950
Daphne du Maurier, "Don't Look Now and Other Stories", Penguin, 1973David Hewson, "The Cemetery of Secrets" Pan Macmillan 2001

Colour and light in Burano

Burano has been home to commercial fishermen since at least the sixth century AD. The houses of Burano were painted bright contrasting colours, it is said, so that fishermen could find their way home in the fogs that sometimes settle over the Venetian lagoon. Today, however the Venetian council controls which colours the houses may be painted, and Burano offers more than cuttlefish cooked in its own ink as a local treat.

From the vaporetto the leaning tower of the sixth century San Martino church, whose interior houses a painting of the crucifixion by Tiepolo the elder, is the first indication that Burano is coming into view.

The soft mud and clay of the flood plains and islands of Northern Italy is the foundation upon which numerous towers and campaniles have been built. This geological feature has led to a proliferation of leaning towers and the consequent architectural innovation of building towers separate from the main buildings. These towers topple when subsiding foundations send the fragile balance of the leaning structure to the point of collapse.

Burano has more to offer the visitor, however, than a leaning tower.

We must give Hemingway his due. There is indeed something distinctly feminine about Burano. All those lace and fabric shops might have something to do with this impression, plus the brightly coloured houses, the abundance of tea and coffee shops. But perhaps it is more to do with the women, women everywhere, from toddlers to great-grandmothers, women of all shapes and sizes, yet with one thing in common - wide welcoming smiles, encouraging each and every visitor to come, view her textiles, drink her coffee, taste her baked goods.

Burano was the poor relation in the Venetian lagoon for centuries. In Roman times it was an outlying village of Torcello. Its star rose during the peak of the trade in lace, after which it reverted to being just another lagoon island.

Today Burano is a trendy address for the well heeled in the European art and design world. Phillipe Starcke, the French designer whose furniture features on the long running American television series Boston Legal is reputed to own a number of houses on the Island.

The island has its own art movement, the Burano School, established in 1910 when a group of artists moved there and, inspired by nineteenth century French schools of painting, adopted a “simple poetic rendition of the landscape” through modern use of colour, and a stripping back of sentimentality. Ironic when one considers the history of the Lagoon Islands and the effect of the French on their history.

In A Venetian Island: Environment History and Change in Burano, Sciama emphasises that Burano is separate and different from Venice, although ‘part of Venice’s administrative and bureaucratic structure’, the island’s relationship with Venice is ‘changing and complex’, with its own ‘strong kinship links’.

Burano’s size and place in the lagoon may have helped develop its own distinct style. The district of Burano is over 50 square kilometres in area, the second largest district in the lagoon, although only half a square kilometre of that area is dry land.

Burano is part of a small triangle formed with the islands Torcello and Mazzorbo. Burano had links and loyalties to Torcello long before Venice even existed. It is also connected by a flat pedestrian bridge to Mazzorbo which is home to the 14th century church of Santa Caterina.

Santa Caterina, Catherine of Alexandria, was reputedly one of the most intelligent and beautiful woman of her day. She was beheaded by the pagan ruler of Alexandria in 305 AD at the age of 23 after being tortured by being splayed on a wheel.

The Crusaders brought the story of Catherine to Europe. The Catherine Wheel (both the children’s gymnastic feat and the fireworks) and the Catherine or Rose window were named after her. Catherine’s ability to defeat philosophers in argument was not celebrated. Instead she became the protector of young unmarried girls. The wheel of her torture became the symbol for wheelwrights, spinners and lace-makers.

Of course, in due course, the French not only lured lacemakers from Burano but also established their own rival protector of young girls and lace makers, the French priest, St John Francis Regis. John Francis’ life and times are more prosaic and more based in fact than those of Catherine.

Whether or not it is the beneficence of Catherine wafting across oceans and mountains and one thousand seven hundred years of time or some other quality in the light and the hospitality of its inhabitants, Burano is an island the visitor can imagine settling into. It is tempting to wonder what life would be like to wake in its small hotel, take a dawn walk over the bridge through the parks of Mazzorbo, drink morning coffee at tables along its cobbled streets, or just sit by the canal each evening and watch the sun set over the lagoon.

Observer
15 May 2010
Blog: Longlines - http://longline8.blogspot.com/
Email: longline8@gmail.com

Points in the Air: Lacemaking on Burano

Lacemaking was one of the early ‘women’s industries’, a means by which many women achieved a measure of financial independence.  Before the French broke the Venetians’ control of the lacemaking industry Burano was one of the main centres of lacemaking in Europe.

 The  Burano vaporetto stop is a small ferry terminal opening to a wide, grassy, treed area on which children play under the watchful eyes of grandmothers, and where youths lounge around waiting for the excitement of whatever will arrive from the other islands.  

After a ferry trip in which drunken men sparred – a display more of linguistic than physical abilty – the sense of space under a blue spring sky was a relief, an escape.

Burano is famous for lacemaking.  Authentic Burano lace is no longer sold in the town's street stalls. Burano lace is now a luxury item, priced according to the time and skill that goes into its making.

Much of the lace sold in Burano shops is today made to order in countries where labour is cheap.

The visitor can still watch lace being stitched in the Scuola dei Merletti (School of Lacemaking) whose museum traces the history of lacemaking on Burano. 

Burano’s lacemaking tradition evolved from the influence of Venetian imports of gold and coloured embroideries from the East.  These inspired Venetian craftswomen who supplied the church cloths and vestments.  They developed white embroidery to trim these items.  Needlepoint lace developed from white embroidery.

The first lacemaking is, in spite of competing claims from orientalists, Francophiles and the numerous other voices clamouring for recognition of their area, not really known.  Many forms of decorative fabric trim were in existence long before true lace evolved. 

But it is interesting that the two regions of Europe where pictorial art flourished in conjunction with great trading skills, north Italy and Flanders, were where lace making first evolved as an important industry.

Lace came into being at the end of the fifteenth century and lace designs evolved from embroidery designs.

The first needle lacers were Venetian.  In the 16^th century Venetian women realized the monetary value of lace.  It was not only nuns cloistered in convents who made lace.  The women of Venice filled their palaces with relatives and servants and bales of thread from Salo on the shores of Lake Garda.  They produced lace edgings by the thousands of metres to trim cuffs, collars, hems because, in the early days, lace was used as a trim.  

These relatives and servants in turn began making lace at home and the skill spread to the islands.

Lace was a non-perishable product, that could be made in spare moments in the course of a woman’s day.  It was not dependent on timing or the season or the weather. 

Soon Murano, Chioggia, Burano and Pellestrina set up schools.  The translation of the Italian ‘scuola’ to the English ‘schools’ is confusing.  Italian ‘scuola’ were artisans’ guilds with strict rules and control over the products made under their auspices.  The scuola controlled who worked in the guilds, who trained the artisans and how, who sold the products, to whom and for how much.

In the sixteenth century the women of Burano developed a fine, delicate form of lace known as “punto in aria” (“points in the air”) which transformed the island into one of the most prosperous lacemaking centres in Europe.  Burano represented the standard for lacemaking in Europe until the end of the 18^th century 

During the 17^th century women broke away from the strict rules that had grown up around lacemaking for the church and developed new styles.

But within the mercantile spirit lies the seeds of its own destruction.  The Venetian Republic aspired to become the publishing capital of Europe and the Venetian dialect had been adopted as the official language of lace makers. 

Printers, authors and designers of manuals on lace making emerged on the fondamentas, salizadas, calles, campos and cortes of Venice.  Guides to lace making were published and became best sellers.  Outside Italy these guides were copied and translated or written by expatriate Venetians.

Those wily French and Flemish lace makers soon were providing serious competition for the women of Burano.  In order to encourage home-based industries the French imposed duty on imported lace and established their own factories for making all types of thread work.  The Venetians responded with their own import duties and bans.

From the 18^th century lace became a commercial enterprise. Venetian lace makers were paid large sums of money to go to France to work in the lace factories there.  The Venetian Republic retaliated by introducing laws against the emigration of lace workers, as they had done previously with the glassworkers of Murano. 

The conquest of Venice in 1797, and the subsequent collapse of its commercial power, resulted in the economic ruination of Burano and by implication of Burano’s women and children, although Burano was already declining as a lacemaking centre.  In 1872 the present day lace-making school was founded in the hope that it would revive the island’s former fortunes, but buyers were not prepared to pay a living wage to the lace makers. 

Nineteenth century male writers seemed to take particular pleasure in recounting stories about Burano’s women and children, beautiful yet reduced to aggressive begging.

An article published in the New York Times on 2^nd July 1880 typifies this writing:

“[We] soon drew up in a bad smelling canal, before a dirty broad street or narrow marketplace, ... we pushed our way through the crowd of begging children to the lace school.  We were accompanied all the way by one particular dirty little girl ... who begged persistently and dolefully. ...

In spite of being unable to locate finished pieces of lace to purchase the writer found at least one compensation for the trip to the island:

The Buranese women are among the prettiest we have seen in North Italy.  When we went back to the gondola, we found the landing swarming with beggars.  We were paddled away from Burano, followed along the sides of the canal by the troop of begging children among whom the frowsty-pated little girl was still prominent and quite unabashed by her utter want of success.”

It is almost certain that canals throughout the lagoon smelt badly in those days.  They still are not that fragrant.  One only wishes the ‘frowsty-pated little girl’ had flung great handfuls of mud from the stinking canal onto the backs of the mean-spirited but doubtless well scented retreating tourists.

Observer

11 May 2010

http://www.longline8.blogspot.com

Email:  longline8@gmail.com

Note: 

There is an enormous amount of information about lace and Burano on the web.  There is also an almost equal amount of printed literature on the lace makers of Burano.  Below is just a sample listing.  

http://www.museocaprai.it/en/index.htm

http://www.topak.cz/text/en/history.aspx

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Art of Modern Lace Making, by The Butterick Publishing Co. 

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22325/22325-h/22325-h.htm

(Good for techniques and styles of lacemaking, but with dubious historical information)

Migration, Minorities, and Technology Transfer in Early Modern Europe* by Salvatore Ciriacono, University of Padua

 New York Times Archive for 1880
The Sciama book is an excellent sociological study