I remember quite clearly the excitement and joy when I was a child and my father used to begin working on a new Christmas crib for our home. I used to watch him a work for hours, trying to absorb every little detail of what he was he making.

Now that the years have gone by, I and Cesco, one of my younger brothers who shares my passion for crib-making, have each developed our own way of making cribs. Our experience through working in the film industry, namely in the art department, has helped us identify certain techniques and tricks that help make even a small-scale model very realistic. We often combine our experiences and methods to come up with ideas, and in fact this is what we have done this year.

Through social networking and word of mouth, we have received commissions for a few tailor-made cribs for private residences, and this has kept us busy since the summer. While we were at it, we also made a few extra cribs, which we offered for sale. It would be correct to say that our cribs are different from others found on the market because of the great attention we pay to correct proportions and fine detail. We hand craft every little detail to fit a specific crib, such as wooden doors, windows, agricultural tools and other items.

In our cribs we try to depict the traditional nativity scene, but always with a different emphasis. Naturally, our main focus is always the stable where the baby Jesus was born, whether it be a grotto, as described in the Gospel according to St Luke, or a wooden or stone shed, as it has been more often depicted in recent years due to continental influence.

Apart from being a hobby, for us crib making is also a mission of sorts to try and restore the crib tradition in every Maltese household. We believe that these days, even more than at any other time, the nativity crib should be the main focus of every family’s Christmas scene.