We’ve all had problems with dust collecting in carpets despite the most stringent efforts of our hoovers and such-like. There is a place in Italy, however, where without dust there would be no carpets! Every year in Camaiore for Corpus Christi (the Feast celebrating the Eucharist, in particular its transubstantiation whereby Christ’s body is actually present in the Host, as believed by Roman Catholics) multi-coloured sawdust carpets are laid down in the main street of this delightful town which also boasts a well-known Lido by the Tyrrhenian sea.

Camaiore’s sawdust carpets are a tangible community art originating around the first half of the nineteenth century. The themes are mainly religious even if over the years they have also addressed social issues in addition to classic decorative, geometric or floral compositions. This year, for example, the theme is that of ‘The Tree of Life’ which could be interpreted in several different ways. For example, ecologically as the threatened oxygen-producing forests on our planet or religiously as the Tree from which Christ’s crucifix was cut. And please don’t forget: without trees there would be no sawdust…

Initially, the main raw materials used by the artists for the composition of the carpets were flower petals and twigs of green myrtle. It was only from 1930 that sawdust became a principal component. The sawdust is obtained from light woods like poplar or fir) and is coloured with aniline in order to obtain the chromatic effects used in the composition of the carpets.

Traditionally the artists maintain great secrecy on the sawdust carpets’ design until the eve of Corpus Christi. These are of impressive dimensions: two metres wide and up to fifty metres in length. Months of elaboration of sketches go into a project which is then realized in just one night.

After the carpet’s artistic conception the design and construction of the wooden templates is undertaken. Then comes the colouring of the sawdust, which in Camaiore is called “pula” (chaff). A multitude of colours is created for the nuances and shades of tone in the carpet’s composition involving many Camaiore denizens who, in their attics, cellars or garages, proceed to colour mountains of sawdust with aniline creating multi-coloured piles of sawdust.

A few days before the solemnity, the various groups trace their carpets’ outlines along the path that the archbishop’s procession will follow but it is the eve of Corpus Domini that the artistic process actually begins. From dusk through the night templates are positioned, colours chosen and sawdust carefully spread.

It’s an artistic work generated by community and the commitment of a group of people who carry out precise tasks until the drawing is completed. That’s how an evanescent wonder is created: a truly colourful and spectacular work that is kept alive for a day, only to be destined to disappear before the end of the following morning.

We did not attend the making of the carpets. Indeed, we were worried that the craftsmen’s work might have to be curtailed as it began to rain in our valley. However, luckily the rain didn’t touch Camaiore and when we arrived at the town the carpets were already beautifully laid out in the main street. It was a truly impressive sight and we were very touched by the immense care in the details and chromatic gradations the local artists produced out of the humblest of materials, discarded sawdust!

Here are some photographs I took to display the carpets’ extraordinary beauty. No wonder that next year the master carpeteers of Camaiore may well have their craft protected as a UNESCO heritage of great value.

After Mass in the town’s Main Square the Corpus Christi procession set forth with the Archbishop carrying the Sacred Host monstrance under a baroque canopy held up by guild members. Local dignitaries, the civic band, and townsfolk with their children accompanied the procession together with singing of religious chants, stirring sounds from the town band and the joyous ringing of bells. It was quite a noise, a totally ecstatic cacophony!

I thought about my time spent in the ceremonies of Tibetan temple near Pisa where a mandala was being patiently created out of another humble material, sand. The climax was the destruction of the great mandala which had been painstakingly built up in the previous weeks. The mandala is a mind liberating celestial city with four gates and its eventual obliteration represents the transience of life on this planet and the fact that the celestial city is truly beyond the comprehension of anyone. I could not help drawing a parallel with what occurred in Camaiore. Although from a different religious tradition the creation of the carpets and their destruction shortly after completion by religious action amounted to the same process, the same transience of life, the futility of imagining any human parlance or immortality, the eternity of the supreme forces that direct our insignificant lives, mutability in all its inevitable impermanence – eternity in a grain of sand, immensity in a speck of sawdust.