Vanishing artisans
June 8, 2011
The past few decades have been tough on the goldsmiths, engravers, furniture makers, wood carvers and sculptors whose work beautified many of the great houses of Europe.
In the Italian city of Florence, many have packed up their tools and left, but a few still remain, clinging to their traditional skills in their centuries-old workshops.
In a small bottega on Via dei Velluti in Florence, master book-binder Enrico Giannini plies a trade handed down to him through the generations.
"My great-great-grandfather started in 1856 with a small stationery store and a small workshop," he told Deutsche Welle.
Giannini uses techniques that are centuries old, binding books in vellum and parchment and embossing them in gold leaf. Every volume is unique. The designs are his own.
Each item takes hours of painstaking labor, but the beauty and originality of this work may not be enough to ensure he stays afloat.
"Nobody wants now," he admitted. "They don't need desk sets. They don't need photo albums. There's the digital camera. You can put everything in your computer. A lot of things are changing."
Over the past few decades alone, hundreds of artisans; gold and silver-smiths, typographers, printers and stone masons, have all fled Florence's city center.
Good old days
In medieval times, the city was a beacon for craftsmen and it remained one throughout the Renaissance and under the rule of the Medicis. The promise of plentiful commissions drew the artisans from all around Italy and overseas.
They formed corporazioni or trade guilds, and created a city that hummed with productivity. A network of masters' studios developed in which artists like Brunelleschi and Donatello were trained.
Their work made "Firenze" famous around the world. But today, little of that network remains, with practitioners of fading art forms like carver and furniture restorer Luigi Mecocci a rare breed.
"At first there were 15 or 16 of us restorers in this area, now there are just three, including me," Mecocci said. "They've made this all into houses. It has transformed Florence. It's becoming really ugly for me because there used to be all these workshops before where people could linger and watch, instead now it's totally changed."
Mecocci said the rents have chased his neighbors away. A small, one-bedroom studio in this area nets a landlord close to $1,500 (1,025 euros) a month. In summer, it earns him the same each week. An artisan simply can't afford it, Mecocci said.
No taste
"It's been three years since I've seen the biggest antique dealer here in Florence, Bartalozzi, come to this workshop and bring me work," Mecocci said. "Before, I did two or three pieces for him a year, very, very important pieces, and now I don't see him anymore."
The master restorer said the economic crisis has also taken its toll on the artisans, affecting both local and international markets for the Florentine goods.
Bookbinder Giannini said he believes a greater problem may be that the public no longer has the taste, or the time, for beauty.
"It's not easy to understand that to bind a book, you need four to five days and when you ask a price for that, they say, 'You're crazy, it's cheaper to buy a new one than to rebind the old,'" he said.
Few today think of purchasing furniture and ornaments for life. Goods are cheap to buy. They last a minute and are easy to throw away, he added.
Adapt or else
But a tiny few artisans are managing to survive, even thrive.
At a workshop further down the Via dei Velluti, Aldo Santini listens as musicians put their instruments through their paces.
Santini is a luitaio - he makes and restores violins, violas and cellos - and it's a lucrative business. A restored violin, depending on its maker and state of repair, can fetch up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. And, as many of the artisans aspire to do, Santini is successfully carving out a niche for himself overseas.
"My clients are most of all dealers from London," Santini said. "The center of the market in the world for violins is London. There are a lot of auctions. And a lot of people make business in the hotels around the auction places."
The concern is - if something doesn't happen soon to prevent it, the artisans' skills - passed down over centuries and acquired over a lifetime - will be lost. It's a fear that Giannini's father also shared.
"My father was saying; 'The artisans are like a chain. If you lose one piece, it's broken. It can't work,'" he said.
Giannini said it's now difficult to find tools. The stores where he once bought the pigments for his paint have closed. But the heir of five generations of entrepreneurs is refusing to give up.
Among his many ideas are DVD covers bound in leather, which look just like books.
"This is the part of the work that I like - to surprise the customers with something," he said. "I love my work for that. When I reach the end of my work, I say, 'Oh. I'm proud of it. I love it.'"
He said he hopes this and other products he's working on will help him survive in the digital age.
Author: Jean di Marino, Florence /sjt
Editor: Sean Sinico