BREAD WORKERS

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 63, 16 March 1938, Page 14

BREAD WORKERS

VENETIAN TRADE Not many visitors to Venice trouble to search out the dingy side streets leading to no particular tourist sight, bordered by small canals of no special interest. Those who go along the streets, however, can at least see the ordinary life of the Venetian poorer classes —a life hidden from the average tourist who is content with the greater show of Saint Mark’s Square and the Grand Canal. In the side streets women sit beside their doors, endlessly threading and weaving strings of tiny beads into the fashionable collars and hand bags of the moment. They scarcely pause to look up from their work at the stray passerby, for such work needs the full attention of eye and hand. They sell their handiwork to the little shops beneath the arcades of St. Mark’s Place where a roaring trade in souvenirs is done. Delicate. cobweb-like patterns of tiny beads go to make smart collars and cuffs, black and white, orange and brown, blue and gold, for women travellers to freshen up old dresses and introduce a touch of novelty to their wardrobes. To the order of the great jewellers and handbag sellers of Venice, they make the evening bags that look like petit-point, but are actually composed of thousands of tiny beads woven into a semi-oriental pattern. The bags are fringed with glistening crystal or silver beads, and are not fitted on to metal tops, but follow the Victorian vogue of being drawn up by cords of matching silk. The work is arduous and a strain on the eyesight, and one bag represents two weeks of toil. Though it may cost more than a pound by the time it reaches the purchaser, the sum paid to the slim-fingered woman who has made it seems little enough in comparison with her work.