Patterns of Life
Her fingers work nimbly, skillfully lacing threads around needles, the pattern slowly, very slowly, coming to life before our eyes. Sitting with a lace pillow resting on her legs, her eyes and fingers working in quick coordination, Marika Camilleri does not look like your average lacemaker. Young and energetic, she is one of a generation of women who are slowly reinventing the traditional craft, introducing new patterns and designs while retaining the old-fashioned methods.
“My interest is to create lace which fits in with the contemporary trends of art and design while retaining the traditional techniques of Maltese lace,” explains the young lacemaker. She was also the first Maltese lace maker to adapt colour to Maltese lace and to create abstract Maltese lace, for which she has won prizes in both categories.
With its intricate patterns, lacemaking is intertwined with Malta’s past and its traditions in complex ways. Dating back from the time of the Knights of Malta, it was made by the poor and worn by the rich, explains Marika. “It was a very important clothing accessory as it showed status. It was also made to adorn church vestments which are still used till the present day.” Eventually, it started being used more as a furniture decoration than as a clothing accessory. Then, after the Second World War, as women started working in factories, the craft went into decline.
In recent years, however, lacemaking is slowly making a comeback, particularly in Gozo, where traditional crafts have survived better. Marika herself is a founder member of the Klabb tal-Bizzilla Maltija (Malta Lace Club), whose main interest is to keep the tradition alive and to encourage new ways of designing and creating lace.
“Maltese lace is one of, if not, the most difficult laces to work,” she explains. “There is a method of carrying pairs from one motif to another, which is not used in other foreign lace techniques. Only a skilled Maltese lace maker is able to work such a technique.” Maltese lace techniques are similar to those of Spanish lace and the two countries are the only ones that work lace on a vertical, cylindrical pillow.
Maltese lace is characterized by the Maltese Cross motif; the sun and the flower are also common motifs. Another characteristic is that wide pieces of lace are worked in strips which are then sewn together to make a whole, such as with tablecloths worked entirely in lace. This allows a number of lace makers to create the various strips, making it possible to complete a piece in a much shorter period of time.
Lacemaking is extremely time-consuming, says Marika, but also very therapeutic, focusing the mind on an object outside itself. Having started making lace at the age of eight, her whole life is interwoven with lacemaking; as she winds the thread around the needles, she creates her own designs, pouring out images and patterns of her own life and of those of an island.