The finest Italian craftsmanship, with the exceptional manual skills of the different territories, has for the first time been represented in a new project promoted by the Gruppo Editoriale publishing house, in association with Fondazione Cologni dei Mestieri d’Arte and Osservatorio dei Mestieri d’Arte of Florence: Italia su misura.
This ambitious, innovative program gives space and visibility to numerous Italian artisans of excellence, who are praised and admired all over the world and who contribute to render Italy a destination for cultivated, and responsible tourists.
How? Via a website and printed guidebook that share the same meaningful, evocative title, Italia su misura (Tailor-made Italy).
Author: wellmadmin
The Charming Habit
“As far as I can recollect, I have always had a fan…” says the 30 year old Parisian, Raphaëlle de Panafieu: when she was a child, her father always brought fans back from his frequent travels to Asia for her and both her sisters. One day she wanted to buy a fan with her own money, but she didn’t like the Asian and the Spanish ones sold on the seafront. They fulfilled indeed their requested basic function, but were too “Asian”, or too “Spanish” according to her taste: they weren’t fashionable.
Raphaëlle wanted something better. This is how her marvellous adventure begun.
In 2009, Raphaëlle started working for Ventilo – a high-end woman’s prêt-à-porter brand – as research manager for Department Stores in Asia, Northern America and the Middle East.
Eloïse Gilles had previously worked for Louis Vuitton and was then dealing with luxury brands and their identity.
Both were just thirty years old. Together, they decided to give the fan another chance. This was something very easy to decide, but much harder to implement, because fan making specialists had almost disappeared in Paris.
A heritage of culture and beauty
In Japan, tradition is as important as progress: one cannot exist without the other. Japan was the first country in the world to build an entire railway network dedicated to the Shinkansen, the famous “bullet trains” that whizz incessantly between bustling futuristic cities. In these cities, hundreds of department stores still dedicate entire floors to kimonos and traditional Japanese craft products. The Kabuki theatre and Sumo wrestling are still very popular in the cradle of modern technology. The origin of Manga is older and nobler than anything a passionate Western reader could imagine. In fact, the history of Japan is as committed to the development of advanced digital technology as it is to the conservation of Ukiyo-e, their traditional woodblock printing technique.
In Japan, the old and the ancient also represent wisdom, not only tradition. In 1950, the Japanese government passed the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties: this law acknowledges the intangible value of living culture and compares it to that of monuments, sites and artefacts. This is how Japan first created the institution of ”Preservers of Important Intangible Cultural Properties”, more commonly known as Living National Treasures (Ningen Kokuho in Japanese). This institution regroups people with supreme expertise and special artistic skills and techniques (Waza in Japanese) in performing Japanese arts and crafts. The Living National Treasures are officially designated and protected by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology through its Agency for Cultural Affairs. The government also supports every member with an annual grant of two million yen. Up to a total of 116 Living National Treasures can be ordained by law: at this moment there are 114. The two categories, arts and crafts, are organised into a number of specific subcategories. Performing arts include Nohgaku (classical musical drama), Gagaku (ancient imperial court music and dances), Bunraku (puppet theatre), Kabuki (traditional musical drama performed only by male actors), Kumi Odori (a narrative dance), Engei (storytelling), Music and Dance. “Crafts” refers to Ceramics, Textiles, Urushi (Japanese natural lacquer work), Metalwork, Woodwork, Doll making, Papermaking.
White gold
According to the Chinese, Kao-ling and pai-tun-tzu represent the “backbone” and the “meat” of porcelain. Today, they are commonly known as kaolin and feldspar. Combined with quartz, they form the alchemical compound, which is at the origin of the purity and hardness of the so-called “white gold” developed during the T’ang dynasty (618-907).
After many unfruitful attempts, between 1708 and 1709, E. W. Von Tschirnhaus, physicist and chemist, and the alchemist J. F. Böttger achieved a miracle: they reproduced in Germany a porcelain almost identical to the Chinese one. The first European manufactory of hard-paste porcelain was established in Meissen in 1710, under the command of Augustus II the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony. He was also a great collector of precious Chinese porcelains. Augustus suffered from what he called the “maladie de porcelaine”: a porcelain obsession rather than a passion. Jealous of Tschirnhaus and Böttger’s discovery, the King prohibited the copying of their recipe and ordered that the Meissen porcelain factory be transferred to the castle of Albrechtsburg, an impregnable fortress near a kaolin mine.
Shortly after, however, the secret was leaked and spread rapidly across Europe. Porcelain factories started popping up in Limoges and Sèvres, France as well as in Doccia, Italy. All of the factories were situated close to kaolin deposits. Kaolin is the sedimentary rock on which the purity of the finished product depends. In the Meissen manufactory, the creation of statues was entrusted to the sculptor Kirchner. Kändler overtook for him later on. Hundreds of life-size porcelain animals were produced for the “Japanese Palace” in Dresden. Under the guidance of Kändler, who became master modeller in 1733, the factory created new decorative motifs and china sets, as well as famous figurines inspired by the Orient, by the Italian “commedia dell’arte” and by everyday life.
Lorenzo Borghi
Lorenzo Borghi’s story started in 1952, at the age of twelve, when he started working at Lionello Passerini’s millinery shop. When Passerini died, Borghi took over and moved the business to Via dei Piatti in the heart of Milan. There, he has been dedicating himself for over fifty years to the fine art of traditional hat-making. During his career, he has collaborated with great fashion designers such as Krizia, Ferré, and Moschino, as well as with theatre costume makers. He makes hats for famous people (including Queen Elisabeth II) as well as for ordinary individuals. Each creation is made with a certain passion and love that only a true craftsman can express through his work.
Giacomo Moor
When did you decide that your future would be in woodworking?
My passion for wood grew in a craftsman’s workshop where I used to spend a lot of time during my university years. My passion for design flourished at the Polytechnic University of Milan, also thanks to Beppe Finessi, an extraordinary professor who influenced my choices and marked my future.
I developed the idea of designing and, especially, of making the objects myself. In the case of single pieces and limited series, the object’s added value lies in the fact that it is hand made. Based on a solid working experience and by examining almost obsessively other consolidated artisan businesses, I persuaded myself that I could make it work.
What training is needed for this profession?
I believe that it takes a double education. On the one hand, you need to have a formal training in the field of design; on the other, you need to develop the technical and manual skills that are necessary to transform an intuition into an object.
Communicating savoir-faire
It is not easy to keep up with Sam Baron. He works in Italy, France and Portugal and is always on the move between Europe and the rest of the world, where he stages his exhibitions and takes part in all the most important design events. The 37-year-old French designer is well known in the design world because he places himself halfway between factory and workshop. So much so that in the last ten years – he started working in 1997, before finishing his studies –he designed objects for design brands such as Zanotta, Ligne Roset and Casamania and took part in special partnership projects with important manufactures, such as Sèvres and Limoges. On top of this, he works as head of the design department of Fabrica, the school/research centre founded by the Benetton group, and the personal projects that he carries out under the name Baron Edition.
Sam, you are a prolific designer as well as a very active art director, and your projects develop into installations and exhibitions with a cultural content (such as your most recent, Belvedere, held at Villa Necchi during the last Salone del Mobile). Are design and its “mise-en-scène” a valid medium for the protection and promotion of savoir-faire?
Design is a process, a practice which allows you to combine different components: creativity, technique and communication… so as an art director it is possible for me to convey a message through a collection of objects that can be focused on a particular subject or theme, depending on the occasion. I believe that when young talents can be dedicated to elaborate new visions (like the projects elaborated with the Fabrica team. Ed.) we are given a great opportunity to establish a dialogue and a contact with the public on specific issues, such as how to defend the legacy of craftsmanship.
Fabscarte
Fabscarte, established from Emilio Brazzolotto’s twenty-year long experience, is specialised in the production of handmade and painted wallpapers. We have visited their wonderful Milanese atelier.
Does this profession require specific training?
An education in arts and crafts is essential, but what is even more important is to work with a master specialised in interior decoration, and to keep broadening knowledge and improving personality.
The fascinating quest for the code of talent
Talent is both the measure of the weight that, on a balance, makes one pan heavier than the other, and the metaphor of anything (money, especially) endorsing the supremacy of one side over the other. A unit of measure that becomes a value in itself, when one seeks evaluation standards that are not just numerical. Talent and value have thus migrated from the solid units of quantity to the less tangible ones of ethics or aesthetics, involving emotional variables such as desire and ambition. Whether quantitative or qualitative, even meritocratic league tables are based on talent: they attribute a value to invention and highlight the flair of those manual skills that are intrinsic to craftsmanship. Because the artisan produces with his own hands, and uses a machine only on condition that he is the one guiding it, with his talent and emotions.
Craftsmanship embraces all the professions obliterated by industrial machines. Man’s work replaced by a serial production in which the prototype is endlessly cloned: modernity has gained supremacy celebrating the triumph of the copy. If we were to illustrate the progress of modernity on a line chart, with competence on the vertical axis and consensus on the other, we would see the curve plummet to the X-axis, against which it would continue to run in a parallel line. What counts in modernity is not quality, an opinion based on comparison, but quantity, measured on the undisputable scale of numbers. And numbers (of copies, votes or spectators) are the new gods of modern times: they command us, they decide who wins and who loses, and their sentence is unappealable. When modernity took over, craftsmanship declined. Its resurgence is the confirmation that modernisation is over. This is the dawning of a new era, in which we must learn how to give up modernity without retracing our footsteps, which is something mankind is not allowed to do. The return to craftsmanship must not imply the restoration of a world that has ceased to be. It has a rather different and richer meaning: the renewal of tradition in the sign of discontinuity.
To give shape with one’s hands, and not in a mould. To leave one’s mark, restoring the pleasure of surprise and the joy of wonder. In craftsmanship, ability, skill and experience play a fundamental role. As much as the supremacy of the individual, the sense of awe, the mystery of beauty, the thrill of competition, the enthusiasm of confrontation. Leaving behind us modernity and its insensitivity, we embark on a formidable quest, an extraordinary adventure towards an unknown destination. Not knowing how to do anything is no longer the aristocratic hallmark of the modern intellectual. Instead, it is the mark of a long-suffered fealty, an enduring servitude, a liberty we must reconquer. In the wake of modernity, we have to deal with the torment of Sisyphus: the fascinating and inexorable quest for the “code of talent”.
Excerpt from La regola del talento. Mestieri d’arte e Scuole italiane di eccellenza (The code of talent. The Métiers d’art and Italian Schools of excellence). Published by Marsilio Editori, March 2014.
Photo credit: Dario Garofalo
The future between schools and markets
The business area of craftsmanshift does not have the same meaning as it did some decades ago, even from a semantic point of view. In France, the definition of “métier d’art” was correctly chosen to substitute “artisanat”. In the past, handicraft was a concept associated to the production process of consumption goods by the artisan regardless of the quality, raw material, techniques or design. Now, artisan work has a completely new meaning: it is a kind of artistic expression reflected in everyday objects, in interior design, in clothing and fashion accessories. It combines the choice of materials, the use of refined techniques, the uniqueness of the product and its own aesthetic characterisation.
This change is not always immediately understood and accepted, even by the most refined observer: it is a craft revolution, which could even be defined as anthropologic. However, it is extremely difficult to convey the need of this evolution to the old generation of artisans, who still have an anachronistic vision of their work. To introduce certain new concepts, interventions of communication and promotion together with the development of a cultural debate are needed. These measures are difficult to take mainly for practical reasons, such as the economic resources needed in order to carry them out. The solution lies in forming a new generation of artist-artisans, or better artisan-artists, culturally ready to face this challenge in the new millennium. Thus, coaching acquires a fundamental role. A particular coaching, since it must combine a sound cultural education with practical “know-how”. Coaching must also include the use of instruments and new techniques that give quality and uniqueness to the product while improving economic performances. This is the natural basis needed to stimulate the young generations to choose an activity. It does not seem like the recent school reform in Italy deeply considered this issue. This theme, which might seem elitarian, regroups elements of cultural novelty, in a period in which the paradigms at the base of the last hundred years’ development seem to be going through a harsh crisis. Public schools and their structures are not ready for this cultural revolution. Often also private schools are not able to develop the necessary programmes due to economic constraints. Furthermore, the general idea of artisanal work as a downgraded activity restricts coaching to the field of activities managed by local institutions. These institutions are unable to train new professional figures, both in terms of time and of organisation of the courses. Another problem is university education. University should be the place where students develop new ideas. Instead, the dominating approach is still to interprete art like in Vasari’s 16th century: by making a distinction between major arts (painting, sculpture and architecture, considered the only ones to represent intellectual dignity) and minor arts, characterised only by their manual contents.
According to this same vision, crafts are relegated to the limbo of those complementary subject matters: their space is too small to influence both students and public opinion. What can be done? A possibility would be to create a movement awakening the sundry category organisations, themselves involved in this sector but with an inferior numerical relevance and, hence, representation. The press and media should be informed in order for them to talk about this historical heritage, which needs to be interpreted in a new way. Finally, the issue should be brought the attention of the European Parliament and Commission, since it is an important part of the cultural heritage in its national, regional and local expressions. We will keep following the path begun over ten years ago, on behalf of future generations and in order to honour our history.