1st prize UIST & Fratelli Alinari Foundation Award; November 2010, Florence
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London, 13th August 2010
I live in London. I caught a
flight that brought me in Perugia, Italy. There I rented a car and then
I left; I drove more than 1500 km just inside Tuscany. It was a
discovery and a great experience. It would be too easy to talk about the artistic, historic and natural heritage of that beautiful land which is already a recognized "brand" in the world; it would be crazy to pop there without spending hours, days with the people of Tuscany. Love and devotion are the key words I've found there among the actions and the words of the people I spoke to; they define the spirit, the character, the philosophy of a very special attitude to life, to the world. Doctor Biondi Santi, one of the entrepreneurs I met, told me: "In the countryside you need to be able to see things"; every day he puts his hat on the first barrel of the first cellar and then he starts his tour to check the state of each cellar, of each barrel and to take care of everything is needed to produce the famous Biondi-Santi wine, the first and unique Brunello of Montalcino, certificated "brunello", yes with a lower case, at the "Esposizione Agraria di Montepulciano" in the 1869; Roberto, the man who looks after the vines in the fields, and Michele, who takes care of the cellars, have the same love in their eyes and a lot of stories are written on their hands. It is not "what" you do but "how" you do it. Innovation and tradition are strictly merged and become the trademark of these manufactured handcrafts: those hands captured my attention more than ever. In the Sassolini-Busatti textile laboratory of Anghiari the tools told me the story of the product: the big fork and the olive oil used to collect and soften the raw-wool when it came from the land between the Tevere and the Arno rivers, a land that you can't find on Google Earth but that you can see on an old map belonging to the family since 1800. The machines they use come from the first industrial revolution and they produce a rhythmical noise which is similar to a mantra. Each product is handheld finished by expert women. Mr Toccafondi who inherited one of the most important typographic laboratory that was created in 1880 told me the stories of when he used to play as a child in the courtyard while my attention went to an old "emblem" which promises any typographic work at moderate prices. Gianfranco, one of his oldest colleague, showed me the old handmade wooden templates used as moulds carrying them in his hands like something really precious. Hands, again. This is what I tried to tell: the story of the people who make the spirit of these three more than a hundred years old companies: the place where they live and work, their hands, their faces; a story of love and devotion.
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copyright 2011 Francesco Caradonna
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