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Advent Calendar day 25

HAPPY CHRISTMAS! (THIS ONE IS AUSTRIAN, PAINTED BEHIND GLASS).  we hope you have enjoyed the Faith Central Advent Calendar.  Next year the exhibition will move on to another venue, watch this space

Advent Calendar day 24 - Santons

The Provencal 'santons' or "Little saints" are one of the most beloved and followed schools of Nativity-making.   These were made by Michelle Andree, the noted santonniere who lived in Britain but learned the craft 90 years ago at her grandfather's knee.  The point of santons is that every trade and way of life in the 19c village comes to the crib - the baker brings bread, the Mayor brings a speech,  the poulterer brings chickens...and there is always this little character, Le Ravi - the village simpleton. He brings nothing, but throws up his hands in wonder and is placed close to the manger.   Madame Andree used to insist that they should never be fired, but left 'fragile comme la chair humaine" - as fragile as human flesh -and re-painted and mended each year, with love.

Advent Calendar day 23 - Suffolk and Slovakia

Why both together?  Because - as visitors to the exhibition in Newcastle  (final day today) will notice, the Suffolk Crib (shown in a barn of its own) has figures made in precisely the same way as the traditional Slovakian figures below.  The dolls are classic corn-husk dolls, made from the outer husk of a corncob which is cut green, dried in the sun slowly, and modelled with thread and string and scissors and ingenuity.
     The craft actually springs up all over the world, apparently quite independently: for wherever maize grows, there are children who get bored during the harvest and take over the husks (and the ‘silk’, for hair) to make figures with more or less skill. American folk-memory has it that the Native Americans taught the children to make such maize dolls at the first Thanksgiving supper.   Similar dolls appear as far apart as Mexico and Russia. 

Advent Calendar day 22 - Temuco, Chile

When my globetrotting brother first brought me this crib from Chile, made by Temuco Mapuche Indians,  I was a bit sniffy at first glance - it is very sentimental and Mabel Lucie Atwell...but then I looked closer and saw that the child has been swaddled in Mapuche style (it's cold on those highlands), and they have lit a fire to keep him warm.  It is thus a genuine culturally-coloured Nativity, and well worth its place in the exhibition. It is a poor region; here are some real Mapuche babies swaddled up similarly..

Advent Calendar day 21 - Bangladesh

There are two Bangladeshi cribs in the exhibition now running in Newcastle - one is a dignified clay one with a fine water-buffalo, the other is this one made of sisal. I am particularly fond of the sheep. And of the fact that everyone is fixed to the base, so it takes less time to set up than the other 150-odd cribs in the collection...

Advent Calendar day 20 -Romany

Every culture which attempts a Nativity sets its own stamp on it: here, in a gipsy camp built by the Romany-born Vernon Rose, the mother and her attendants obey Romany purity laws by having the baby in a “bender”, a temporary tent which can be burnt afterwards. 
  The welcome to a Romany child is intense; in some tribes it is wrapped in swaddling, on which a few drops of the father’s blood are let to fall, in earnest of its paternity; sometimes a piece of his clothing is placed on the baby. He is often prohibited from leaving the camp between sunset and sunrise, so that he is a protector from diabolical spirits;  no other man may protect his wife. The child has three names: the first one a secret, whispered by the mother at birth and told to nobody. The second is a Roma name, for use in the tribe. The last, baptismal name is according to the religion of the country where the child is living,  and is the least important.    
    For this Nativity, now on view in the Newcastle Exhibition,  the artist wrote a poem  beginning:   
      Romani Jesu, born on the straw,
     Following only his Father’s law...

Advent Calendar day 19 - Rwanda

This second African crib (on show in the exhibiton now open in Newcastle) is from Rwanda; I found it on sale in France for a charity,  in the year after the genocide. As in all the African cribs, the feeling that the artist has for the material -  ivory,  ebony, soapstone or wood -  contributes to the power of the piece. This is jacaranda wood.
 

Advent Calendar day 18 - Tanzania

African spirituality is strong and  earthy: the spirit world is part of daily life. There is magic, there are miracles,  there are holy places ,  people and  things. When this feeling of African sacredness invests itself into a set of Christian statuary,  it is extraordinarily powerful, all the more moving to Westerners for its differentness: such figures are a powerful tool for meditation. Nothing is more universal than the birth of a baby,  the coming of a miraculous new life;  and since in the African spiritual universe  spirits are thought to reside in trees,  water,  animals and rocks,  the very materials of the sculpture have a numinous quality. This - from the exhibition which opens today in Newcastle - is from Tanzania, made of ebony. Tomorrow, more African cribs.

Advent Calendar day 17 - shocking

In Barcelona, the strong Catalan crib tradition always includes, in the corner of the family crib, a little man squatting down in the corner who is - face it -  defecating. The "caganer" dates back to the 16th century, some sy, though the Catalan goverment has now banned him from official displays;  he represents the earthier aspect of Incarnation, and perhaps also fertility.   Tends to startle people, though.  A small one may or may not be in the exhibition of cribs in Newcastle which opens tomorrow.    .

Advent Calendar day 16 - Naples

If you go down the Via S.Gregoria Armeno in Naples all year round you find more cribs  - presepi - and figures  than you could ever imagine; and moreover, you also notice  that the visitors to the crib include such contemporary figures as Mother Teresa and Diana, George Bush and Elvis Presley.  And,  almost always,  a Harlequin figure like the one in our Newcastle exhibition ,  with a custard pie ready to fling.   It is, I suppose, his one talent.  I like the way the Neapolitans find it natural to set the crib scene in a pub...