The last person to make fishnets by hand in Sicily, and perhaps Italy, has died at the age of 78.
Antonio Vultaggio began making nets for fishermen when he was five and for the next three-quarters of a century dedicated himself to a dying trade with passion, patience and sacrifice.
A son and grandson of master net weavers, Vultaggio would start at six in the morning and worked out in the open air into the late afternoon and in all kinds of weather here in this western Sicilian coastal town.
The net business began to dry up in the 1970s with the arrival of cheap, factory-made nets and at the end of the 1980s Vultaggio was offered a job at a net plant in Mazara del Vallo, some 40km south of here.
Vultaggio gave it a try, commuted by train each morning, but in the end gave it up to go back to his old life.
"I'm an old guy, a creature of habit. Maybe if I was 20 years younger I would have stuck it out," he said at the time.
