What is it like to be the last custodian of an ancient rite?

He soon discovered she was one of the last people on Earth who knew how to make a specific kind of incredibly intricate lace. She described it as “embroidering the air”.

Isn’t it strange, Stein thought, that this is how Burano lace will end; after 300 years of being worn by royalty, traded at exorbitant rates, and treated as a coveted status symbol?

“It was once so valuable, it was even the target of international smuggling. But more than anything, it was the pride of Burano. It was the life’s work of an astonishing line of women who gave something beautiful to the world, and in doing so, shaped this island,” says Stein, 42.

From that chance encounter 20 years ago came the idea for Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions and the Last People Keeping Them Alive (2024).

Stein’s book now serves as a custodian too. It tells 10 tales from five continents. Among these are the stories of…

* A man in Japan with knowledge of the secret ingredient in a 700-year-old recipe for soy sauce.

* A 27th-generation West African griot or bard (he can recite the entire Epic of Sundiat, about the 13th-century founder of the Mali empire).

* Cuba’s last official cigar-factory “readers” (who keep workers motivated and entertained as they perform their monotonous task of rolling cigars, by reading aloud from the news, novellas or poetry).

* The last Inca bridge master capable of rebuilding, each year, Peru’s last remaining bridge woven from grass.

Attention tends to be focused on pioneers, inventors and innovators, but highly skilled everyday people, dedicated to preserving ancient rites, shape our world too. “They represent the places we all come from,” says Stein. “These gorgeous, irrational, gentle things humans do are what make the world so wonderfully diverse.”

END OF THE LINE

Stein spent over a year on the book, meeting each of the people he has featured. A nine-month sabbatical from BBC helped him put it together, he adds.

In rural Peru, he met Victoriano Arizapana, 60, who prays to the mountain gods as he re-weaves the last Inca grass bridge every year, aware that the slopes he dangles over will decide his fate.

In Sardinia, Italy, the story Stein chased involved a rare type of pasta: su filindeu, or threads of God. “It involves pulling and folding semolina dough into 256 perfectly even strands… and then stretching the needle-thin wires diagonally across a circular frame in an intricate three-layer pattern,” Stein writes. Once considered a vital element of a major feast, it is so difficult to make that it is now dying out.

In India, Stein met J Sudhammal, whose family in Aranmula, Kerala, has been making an unusual type of mirror for over 300 years. It contains metal in place of glass, polished to such a high shine that it becomes reflective.

While mirrors made of metal were not uncommon, before glass became cheaper and more widespread, most offered only a vague reflection. With the Aranmula mirrors, it is said one cannot tell the difference… until one notices a sharpness glass cannot offer. These mirrors are considered superior, by some, and are said to reflect the true you, without the refraction and distortions of glass.

How the mirror is made is still a secret, as is the exact composition of the alloy used.

Stein was particularly interested to meet J Sudhammal, 48, a rare woman entrusted with these secrets (because she had no brothers). As her father lay dying, he asked her to promise she would carry on the family tradition. She quit her job as a teacher to do so, 18 years ago.

She has now passed the secrets on to her son, but will likely be the last generation of her family to make the mirrors for a living.

WHEN TIME IS MONEY

New technology is often the reason a cherished tradition dies out. Sometimes, as with the bridge-weaver in Peru, the danger inherent in it also contributes to its decline. But, often, a tradition will die simply because, well, time is money.

The women who made the threads of God pasta and the men who made metal mirrors were once so respected, it would have been hard to get them to consider doing something else. Today, practitioners of such arts cannot expect to earn the respect their forebears did, or make as good a living from it. Sudhammal’s 26-year-old son puts it plainly. “This is not a lucrative career option,” he has told her.

“Simply put: we are pricing out cultural heritage,” says Stein. “The result, as the world becomes smaller and localism gives way to internationalism, is that these highly localised customs have become nearly-lost worlds, perched at the brink of disappearance.”