Lebanese stained glass artists in overdrive to restore Beirut's beauty
- Last updated: October 3, 2020 | 11:23 ..
Lebanese stained glass artist Maya Husseini had hoped to retire after decades spent designing colourful windows, but she has been flooded with work since the blast that ripped through Beirut.
"I can't possibly not try to restore what is gone," said the 60-year-old woman, her bright red curly hair in a short bob.
The massive explosion at the capital's port on August 4 killed more than 190 people and wounded thousands more as it sent lethal shockwaves pummelling through the city.
But it also ravaged dozens of Beirut's most cherished heritage buildings.
Husseini is one of several artists slowly starting to restore artworks devastated in the disaster.
In her basement workshop on the outskirts of Beirut, she gestured at what remained of windows of a 19th-century church she had restored after the 1975-1990 civil war.
Glass dust
On her work table, she picked a green piece of glass and lodged it between curving lengths of soft lead to rebuild a window of flowers and leaves for a private home.
Even if she has now taken on apprentices, she said there is still a lot of work ahead.
But until that aid arrives, Lebanese are doing what they can on their own.
Among them, artwork conservation specialist Gaby Maamary has decided to offer to restore damaged paintings for free.
He says he was inspired after seeing Lebanese youths sweeping away seas of rubble and glass after the blast, and decided to channels his skills towards preserving Beirut's heritage.
In his Beirut studio, he carefully held up a 17th-century nature morte by Italian artist Elena Recco, depicting a cat greedily eyeing up some dead fish.
In several places, the canvas had been slashed by flying shards of glass.
Saved from the trash
The initiative has taken him to assess damage in art galleries, but also private homes.
In one, he pulled a painting worth tens of thousands of dollars out of the trash. To his horror, he found another bound up in sticky tape.
The owner had rushed to hospital with her severely injured son after the explosion, and someone helping to clean up the mess had not realised their worth.
But even without sticky tape to complicate matters, Maamary said conservation is a complex process that involves hours of planning before even touching the artwork.
"Sometimes the same step has to be done several times, simply because we don't have the museum equipment," he said.
Bringing in specialised materials from abroad is also tricky, with bank transfers blocked from Lebanon's crisis-hit banks.
But drawing on the help of friends and using what is locally available, Maamary is determined to carry on.