As you walk through Malta’s Gozo’s streets during the Christmas days, you see facades of houses lit, open doors on the antiporta to show the indoor decorations and windows and galleries all decorated for Christmas. In these ornamentations, baby Jesus and the crib still stand out. Modestly these decorations are also found at the home of the couple Michael and Joan Caruana from Santa Venera, but here a collection of small cribs from various countries from all over the world stands out. A collection that combines the craftsmanship and tradition of these countries during this beautiful time of the year.
The couple just came from Strasbourg where they visited several Christmas Markets, including the oldest and most beautiful in Europe and also from Frankfurt. Thus, since 2010 when Michael was tempted to start this collection, so far Caruana has visited Christmas Markets and shops selling small cribs in at least 11 countries including Austria (three times Vienna), Belgium (Brussels), France (Lourdes several times and Strasbourg), Germany (Frankfurt twice and Munich), Italy (Assisi, Naples, Pompeii, Rome and the Vatican city several times), the Netherlands (Amsterdam), Poland (Krakow), Slovakia (Bratislava), Slovenia (Ljubljana) and Hungary (Budapest).
Apart from the cribs Michael bought from these countries, he bought others from other countries including South Africa, America, the Holy Land, Belarus, Bolivia, India, Mexico, Peru, the United Kingdom and Sicily and also from Malta where one now finds a large variety of small cribs.
In addition, their children and friends presented them with cribs, recently from Spain and Guatemala. Among the friends were those who employed a dedicated crib or gave them one they had been cherishing in their home for years.
To these Michael has now added slightly larger cribs he made from recycled items particularly in the years 2020 and 2021 when, due to COVID, they were unable to travel. Here Michael found help from Ġużi Sammut from the Men’s Branch of the Zurrie.
MUSEUM who provided him with caves and pastels crafted over the years by members of the same Society with paperback, plaster, candle and clay. Two years ago Ġużi Sammut gave Michael a set of candlelit pasteurs as well as a number of clay pastels by Nenu Gauci (Ta’ Disma) from Żejtun. These pastors lack the main protagonists: Our Lady, St Joseph, baby Jesus, the donkey and the cow and some sheep. That same year Michael managed to speak to Nenu’s son, Fr Gino, who still cherishes the pasteural moulds his father used to make. That’s when Michael discovered that Nenu, for one reason or another, did not include the baby Jesus in his set. Fr Gino promised that he would work the pasteurs he still lacks!
Also in building these cribs, Michael found help from Barbara Woodworks of Ħamrun who provided small pieces of wood and other objects.
In total, today Caruana has over 600 small cribs with a total of over 3,000 pastors from 23 countries around the world.
Apart from the small and traditional cribs of Naples, the other cribs of the various countries distinguish themselves from each other because they are made according to their characters and traditions, some of them unique. Those of Austria, Germany and France are more made up of tree trunks and candles; those from the Holy Land are made of olive trees; those from Sicily from pottery and lava; while those from Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia are made up of vegetable and fruit carvings (such as pumpkin and pomegranate peel, paper, straw and reed). Many of these cribs depict country craftsmanship and dedication because they are mostly not mass production work.
Although the cribs are all small, the smallest and most valuable one is the one hand-crafted in wood in a nut shell (it has nothing to do with those sold on the streets) by Maltese sculptor Martin Bezzina Wettinger while the largest is the one made from porcelain from Royal Delft of the Netherlands. The oldest crib (a small cave that children used to be given by the MUSEUM Society) dates back to the 1950s.
Interestingly, eight small porcelain pastels that Michael bought from an antique shop in Vienna in 2019. These pastels were not designed to be assembled into a crib as Michael did but to mix them, according to an old Austrian tradition, with the fruit of the Christmas pudding and who (when the pudding breaks in the Christmas dinner) finds the baby Jesus had to make the pudding the following year!
Among the new acquisitions in his collection, Michael has a crib produced by the girls of the Kirkop MUSEUM; another worked by the young woman Stephania Zammit from Ħamrun; original pottery crib by an artist from Cagliari; another modern one from Strasbourg which with four candles surrounds a mill; and the one introduced in recent years in Spain of Our Lady asleep after childbirth with St. Joseph caring for the baby himself. But not least, is a chocolate crib crafted by Jacques Bockel from Monswiller in France.
