MANUARTI
Magazine
Crafts told from the inside
The hive is not a warehouse
Honey is a reserve the bees build for themselves. The beekeeper’s trade begins in deciding how much of that reserve can leave the hive — and then in...
ReadFirst blacksmiths, then farmers
The family’s first skill is iron. In a farming territory the blacksmith’s forge and the machine shop do not live at the margins of cultivation: they repair tools,...
ReadStraw has to learn the curve
The braid goes in under the presser foot almost straight. On the other side a spiral begins to come out. At first the change is minimal: one band...
ReadThe back tells you how it was made
The cloth is not an empty surface. Warp and weft build a grid with a density, a regularity and a direction, and every technique leans on it differently:...
ReadGlass takes shape while it moves
The blowpipe goes into the furnace and gathers a mass of incandescent glass. The gesture can look like lifting a portion of material out of a container, but...
ReadEvery book must have a reason
“Publishing house” suggests a building with editorial desks, design and sales offices and warehouses. In independent publishing the same words can describe a business in which the publisher...
ReadWine is decided before the cellar
In winter the vine has lost its leaves and shows its structure. The pruner chooses which canes and which spurs to keep, how many potential shoots to entrust...
ReadMilk never arrives the same
At the start, in the vat, there is a white liquid that looks identical to yesterday’s. That is an illusion. Milk can hold different proportions of water, fat,...
ReadRoasting is something you listen to
Before it reaches the roastery, coffee has been grown, picked, separated from the fruit, fermented or processed in some other way, dried, sorted, bagged and shipped. Whoever roasts...
ReadSmall by choice
Ventena lies in the upper Valdarno, inside the municipality of Montevarchi: slopes, olive trees, woods, farmland broken up by settlements. A position like this guarantees nothing about the...
ReadThe mill does not create quality
The olives reach the mill in perforated crates. From a distance they all look alike: green, purple, black, covered by a few leaves left over from the harvest....
ReadThe light arrives when the hand stops
An alabaster lamp does not become luminous when you plug it in. The possibility of light passing through it was built much earlier, in the workshop, while the...
ReadThe name arrives after twenty years of invisible hands
The company gives 1994 as the year of the first opening. Marcella and Maria Teresa Lorenzi come out of the Istituto d’Arte di Firenze (the city’s art school)...
ReadThe jewel passes from one hand to another
At Tosi the window of Anna Gioielli does not hide the workshop. It lets you see it. The choice is practical before it is narrative: whoever walks in...
ReadCarving begins with the drawing
Carving means removing, and every pass narrows the margin for correction. A gouge can lower a ground, separate two planes, hollow out a cove or set out a...
ReadThe recipe does not see the dough
Two doughs can be born at the same hour and not be the same age. One has already gained volume: the surface is taut, and under the hand...
ReadThe cut begins before the edge
A knife can look finished and not be. The blade is polished, the handle is mounted, the pins have been levelled flush and the surface shows no interruption;...
ReadEvery restoration begins with what is left
A painting, a sculpture, a textile or a composite object arrives with a precise question attached. There may be a lifting area to secure, a move to prepare,...
ReadA port city enters the beer
Before the professional plant there is homebrewing. Brewing at home lets you try recipes, watch fermentations and get things wrong on small volumes, and it teaches one thing...
ReadThe fibre remembers where it comes from
From a distance, bales of garments and offcuts already look like a uniform resource. They are compact, weighed, tied, ready to be moved. But the logistics of the...
ReadSalt is not enough
The first grain of salt meets the surface. The innermost parts of the leg are still far away: in between lie centimetres of muscle, fat and connective tissue,...
ReadThe market continues inside the jar
The weekly market forces you to prepare early, transport, set up, display and take down. Every day changes with the season, the weather, the square and the competition,...
ReadLeather is not a surface
A finished leather offers itself to the eye as a surface. It can be smooth, matt, glossy or velvety; it can carry a uniform colour or show veining...
ReadThe water draws before the paper
The tray is the first sheet, and a sheet that keeps nothing. Every grain of dust, every residue of the previous print and every movement of the air...
ReadIron has a few seconds to change
Metal is heated so that it can deform without demanding forces the workpiece and the tools cannot take. The right temperature depends on the material, on the section...
ReadThe colour was already in the stone
The inlayer moves a paper template across a slice of jasper. In one position a paler vein crosses the shape like the natural fold of a petal; a...
ReadFire does not accept corrections
When the piece goes into the kiln, the hand withdraws. The ceramist can set the firing, follow its progress and wait for the cycle to close, but can...
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