I do not believe that the craftsman’s productive ability is the characteristic that most distinguishes him in today’s world. The techniques he practices are certainly fascinating as much as his artistry can be appreciable-two elements deeply interconnected in the figure of the master craftsman-but the peculiarity that makes him so special is something deeper and more elusive, something that cannot be touched with one’s hand. It is something that cannot be seen, but can be felt, and that is why it is easy to lose sight of it, so distracted are we-so used to touch before we believe, before we know.
The characteristic that most distinguishes the figure of the craftsman in today’s world is his humanity.
The craftsman is not a machine that produces, but a human being that creates. His humanity is our mirror that listens, interprets, tells. It is a thread that has the ability to connect us to thousands of years of tradition, that is, our history, and at the same time to project our vision, and thus our voice, thousands of years into the future when the objects we commission today will be considered historical relics.
The craftsman is the one who-thanks precisely to his human dimension combined with his productive and artistic ability-helps us not to forget; he gives us continuity. In a sense, if every now and then we are able to enjoy a few glimpses of the past and imagine it animated and clothed in all its nuances and a thousand colors, it is also thanks to the artisan: engraver, weaver, goldsmith, leatherworker or restorer it may be.
In fact, this is the theme I chose to propose last November (2024) when I was invited to do a photography exhibition at the Festival “Il Magnifico,” a festival organized in Florence annually to promote young creatives and artists. Composed of a selection of six black-and-white photographs giving a nostalgic view of beautiful views of Florence and portraits (intentionally in color) of two of the Artisan Partners of L’Arte Nascosta taken in their workshops, I proposed the exhibition as a tribute to all those excellences of the Italian art craft sector that still today, despite countless technological advances, remains in my opinion the only adequate resource to give form — and thus life and voice and especially color — to human expression. In this way, the exhibition was a manifestation of L’Arte Nascosta’s mission to awaken in the modern consumer the patron nature that in today’s world is often overlooked if not forgotten altogether.
While in its day-to-day L’Arte Nascosta plays a role in supporting patrons to facilitate their access to the artisan workshops with which we collaborate and from which they have the opportunity to make various types of commissions, on this occasion I wanted to facilitate another type of patronage, giving our community of patrons and art lovers the opportunity to contribute to the maintenance and preservation of priceless historic works of art. Therefore, I have chosen to offer for sale a very limited series of prints of the photographs presented at the November exhibition and then donate the proceeds of the sale to the Opera di Santa Croce, the entity responsible for managing the monumental complex of the Basilica di Santa Croce, one of the four main basilicas of Florence and the eternal resting place of such important figures in Italian history as Michelangelo and Galileo Galilei. The donated money will be used for ongoing conservation work at the monumental complex of Santa Croce.
The sale of the photographs is still ongoing on The Hidden Art website (https://www.lartenascosta.com/photo-sale-2024) and will remain open until March 2025 when the exhibition will be displayed in New York at The Armoury, a prestigious men’s clothing store located at 13 E 69th Street in Manhattan.
The article “An Eternal Thread: elusive, but evergreen,” a photo exhibit and fundraiser for art conservation in Florence comes from TheNewyorkese.
