Carving 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 leaf; if it goes past the useful depth, no reverse pressure exists that can put the fibre back where it was. You can change the drawing, add material or make the piece again, but you cannot pretend the subtraction never happened.

That is why the work proceeds in levels. First the masses are roughed out, then the secondary volumes are defined, and only at the end do you look for edges, undercuts and passages of light. Going straight into the detail produces finished areas surrounded by material still to be governed, and it raises the risk of knocking them or altering their proportion.

The drawing is not there to immobilise the hand. It is there to tell the hand how much it may remove at each stage. The grain can suggest a variation, a knot can force a change of direction, a chip can call for an adjustment: the carver decides inside a field that has already been built. The freedom of the gesture does not lie in the absence of constraints, but in recognising which constraints protect the form and which can be negotiated.

San Frediano teaches that a workshop is never alone

The Oltrarno in Firenze, and in particular the triangle between Porta San Frediano, Porta Romana and Santo Spirito, was for a long time a concentration of workshops. Goldsmiths, carvers, restorers, framemakers and gilders worked close enough together for the exchange of tools, commissions and skills to be ordinary. The city did not produce craft because it possessed some abstractly creative character: it produced it because a structure of apprenticeship and proximity existed.

Starting there meant entering that system. A piece of furniture did not come out of a single gesture: the wood was chosen and prepared, the structure built, the surface carved, painted or gilded, the hardware fitted. Even when many stages stayed inside the same workshop, measuring yourself against other crafts gave you the measure of your own.

The workshop taught an economic discipline as well. You had to deliver, calculate the material, correct without eating the margin, keep a reputation inside a network where work circulated together with judgements. Tradition, here, was not a repertoire of scrolls: it was the way know-how became reliable enough to pass from one master to two young craftsmen and, later, from one generation to the next.

The design comes before the first shaving

The image of the carver freely following the grain belongs to only one part of the work. A piece destined for a room, a use and a client needs proportions before it needs ornament: height, depth, openings, bearings, clearances and loads define what the decoration will be able to do. The carved mark has to inhabit a structure without weakening it and without stopping it working.

The drawing establishes hierarchies. It decides where the eye should stop, how far a cornice should project, which mass can be lightened and where the wood must stay solid. In a classical language it puts mouldings, symmetries and bays into relation; in a contemporary one it can reduce the vocabulary, but not the need to govern the relations.

L’ARTES starts as a workshop for furniture and carving, and the two words should be kept together. If the carving is separated from the furniture it becomes an application; if the furniture ignores the carving it is meant to take, it offers the wrong surfaces and the wrong thicknesses. The quality of the relief is decided when the blank is dimensioned, the grain is oriented and the jointing point is established.

Before the first cut, a large part of the work has already happened in the mind.

The grain decides the direction of the cut

Wood does not offer the same resistance in every direction. The fibres follow the growth of the tree, change around the knots and can wander inside a board that looks regular at first sight. A gouge driven against the grain tends to lift and tear, while in the favourable direction it cuts with more continuity; but a curved relief often forces a change of direction within a few centimetres.

The carver reads the surface through small trials, through sound and through the response of the tool. When the cut begins to lift what should stay, the carver stops and comes at the area from the other side. That reversal is not hesitation: it is the way the design accepts the real structure of the material.

The choice of the blank anticipates many difficulties. Grain that runs too steeply, defects and internal tensions can compromise thin or mirrored elements, and orienting the drawing well reduces the risk without removing the variability. Two parts born from the same pattern will never be identical in every fibre. Craft consistency does not ask you to cancel the difference: it asks you to keep it inside the intended form and function.

Gouges form an alphabet

A carving workshop owns gouges with different sweeps, widths and profiles, and the number stamped on the tool does not automatically produce the right mark. The choice depends on the radius, the depth, the access and the direction of the grain. A gouge that is too flat struggles to follow a hollow; one that is too curved leaves furrows that mean more material to remove.

Sharpening is part of the geometry. A well-prepared cutting edge severs and leaves a legible surface; a blunt one crushes the fibres, demands force and increases the risk of running off the line. Sharpening is not a pause from production: it is preparing the condition in which control stays possible.

The mallet and the free hand answer to different stages too. The blow helps in the roughing out and in cuts that ask for energy, controlled push brings you close to the detail, and posture, the way the piece is held and the position of the hand guarding the run of the tool count as much as the tool itself. The collection of gouges is not a display of tradition: it is an alphabet in which each shape is chosen because that particular syllable of wood asks for exactly that sound.

Symmetry is built out of tiny differences

Many classical pieces call for mirrored elements: leaves, volutes, cornices, legs or cresting. Drawing the same pattern on two blanks is not enough, because the grain changes, the light strikes from different sides and the eye compares the transitions above all. Perceived symmetry comes out of corrections that take those differences into account.

Templates, dividers and reference marks help to transfer the measurements. During the roughing out the carver alternates between the parts, so as not to finish one and then chase it on the other, and checks dimensions, angles and shadows. A millimetre on an edge can be irrelevant; on the tip of a repeated leaf it can break the rhythm of an entire front.

The hand inevitably introduces variations, and the problem is not to eliminate them but to understand where they become a disturbance. Two elements can fail to match under a gauge and look perfectly balanced in the room; conversely, a small difference placed on a central axis becomes immediate. The drawing offers the skeleton, continuous comparison builds the visible symmetry.

The eye does not replace the measurement and the measurement does not replace the eye.

The piece has to stand up before it is decorated

The structure takes weight, movement and daily use. A door pulls on its hinges, a drawer transfers loads to its runners, a table meets lateral thrust, a bookcase changes its load: the joints and the sections have to answer those actions. Carving can take part in the structure, but it cannot mask a weakness in it.

Tenons, mortises, dowels and rebates require precision and an understanding of how wood moves. A joint that is too loose loses stability, one that is forced too hard can split. Glues and contemporary systems add possibilities, but they do not make the fit irrelevant: if two surfaces do not work properly together, the adhesive takes a stress it may not have been chosen for.

Wood, besides, never stops moving. It exchanges moisture with the air and, when conditions change, tends to swell or shrink differently according to direction and species. A perfectly immobile piece of furniture is an expectation incompatible with the material: the design has to allow small movements without turning them into cracks, warping or broken joints. Panels set in frames, backs, wide tops and veneers ask for specific solutions, and locking a board across the grain with no margin concentrates the stresses.

Finishes and rooms have their effect too: they slow the exchange down, they do not cancel the response to humidity. Moving a piece from a Tuscan workshop to a heated villa, to a house on the coast or to an air-conditioned hotel changes the conditions it will have to live in. The craftsman cannot control every future environment, but can choose adequately seasoned wood, orient the components and explain care and placement. The drawing does not govern the initial shape alone: it has to leave the material room to stay intact while it goes on behaving like wood.

The piece in the white already contains the finish

Building “in the white” does not mean freely completing a form that varnish and decoration will correct later. A finish has thickness, transparency and behaviour. A ground fills the pores and the small irregularities, but it can also soften a detail; gilding makes scratches and discontinuities visible; a gloss lacquer amplifies every ripple in the surface.

So the wood is prepared with the intended treatment in mind. The areas to be gilded, painted or left visible ask for different degrees of sanding and for compatible grounds, and the edges must keep the decisiveness of the drawing after the abrasive stages. In relief work, insisting on an industrial uniformity can cancel the crispness of the forms.

A lacquered surface comes from preparation, grounds, colour and protection, and every coat has to adhere and dry in the conditions it was meant for. Dust, damp, contamination or uneven rubbing down stay visible, above all on wide surfaces and glossy finishes: the quality does not depend on a particularly generous final coat, but on the continuity of the cycle. The colour, then, changes with the ground, the number of passes, the light and the degree of sheen, and simply saying “ivory” or “black” is not enough to produce consistency.

Shared responsibility between the joinery, the carving and the finishing keeps each department from blaming the one before. If a surface does not take the ground well, you have to work out whether it depends on the wood, the glue, the preparation or the chosen cycle. L’ARTES states that it follows the design, the construction in the white and the finishing stages in house, and that continuity lets the carver talk to whoever prepares the structure. Doing everything in the same place is not a merit in itself: it becomes one when the stages talk to each other.

Gilding asks for a ground more precise than the gold

The metal leaf is extremely thin and records whatever it finds. If the support carries a scratch, a speck of dust or an uncertain edge, the brilliance does not hide it: it makes it more legible. Traditional preparations call for specific layers and materials, from the size to the gesso grounds and, in some techniques, the bole that water gilding needs, and for times in which every surface is rubbed down and checked.

Applying the leaf asks for a governed room, breath and tools. A movement of air can shift it, an area that has not been properly prepared will not hold it, an overlap alters the reflection. The stages that follow can burnish, protect or patinate according to the result being sought: gold does not coincide with a single effect, it can look compact, vibrant, worn, or set against other finishes.

L’ARTES includes hand gilding among its own processes, and keeping it inside the in-house cycle makes it possible to design the relief already knowing how the leaf will read its depths. An undercut that is too closed will be hard to prepare, a fragile edge will suffer the rubbing down, a wide surface will ask for regularity. Gilding does not arrive to ennoble a piece that is already finished: it conditions the drawing from the start.

The same holds for painted work, motifs and patinas, which can transform a front and risk becoming an independent skin. When the decoration works it follows the bays, the openings and the points where a piece is gripped, it knows where to stop and how to pass from one surface to another, and it takes into account that a drawer will be touched, a cornice will cast a shadow, a door will change position. Even in hand decoration there are preparatory drawings, spolveri (pounced cartoons), masks and reference marks: repeating a motif requires method, and the hand that introduces variations should not lose the rhythm at the corners or over the joints.

Classical and contemporary share the same problems

A classical piece can make the quantity of work evident through cornices, carving and gilding; a contemporary one can hide it behind alignments, minimal shadow gaps and large planes. The difference of language does not correspond to a difference between made and not made: both have to solve structure, wood movement, opening, assembly and finishing. In contemporary work a small inaccuracy on a straight shadow gap can become more visible than a variation inside a complex relief; in classical work the accumulation of elements increases the dependencies and can make cleaning or repair difficult.

The three lines the company states — Classico, Contemporary and Antica Firenze — can therefore be read not as three separate identities, but as three ways of testing the same production system. Choosing contemporary does not mean giving up the memory of carving: it can mean using that discipline to control proportions and edges without showing the gouge. Choosing classical does not mean copying; it requires understanding the logic that made a form credible.

The name Antica Firenze recalls a recognisable heritage, but the reference cannot be a sum of historical signs. Motifs, colours and proportions have to be chosen coherently, avoiding the placing of every available quotation on the same object. Sobriety does not depend on the absolute quantity of ornament: it depends on the hierarchy.

The catalogue then crosses many types — tables, seating, bedrooms, kitchens, accessories and other families — and a wide range can suggest that the workshop knows how to produce anything in the same way. Each category instead brings different ergonomics, hardware, rules of use and stresses. A chair takes dynamic loads and has to be gripped, a kitchen meets steam, heat and frequent cleaning, a bedside table works at a different scale from a boiserie, a bathroom unit faces damp and services. The craft is not knowing how to apply the same decoration to nineteen categories: it is knowing when that decoration, that section and that finish have to change.

In the 1980s the workshop leaves the centre

The company recounts that in the 1980s the workshop moves out of the centre of Firenze, because growth and production needs make a different space necessary. The move should not be read as an exit from the craft, nor as the automatic loss of the workshop as a place: what changes is the scale at which the work has to be organised. A bespoke piece requires areas for boards and half-finished parts, machines, assembly, finishing, drying and packing, and commissions for villas, hotels or complete interiors multiply components and dependencies. In the historic centre access, handling and floor area can become real limits.

Moving lets the production breathe, but it forces you to rebuild the closeness between departments that in the small workshop was almost inevitable. The present site at Sambuca, in the comune of Tavarnelle Val di Pesa, and the showroom in via Sangallo separate the functions without separating the story: the client meets collections and room settings in the display space, the workshop has to turn measurements and choices into components, and the distance is filled by drawings, samples and checking.

Sambuca lies along the Pesa corridor, outside the centre of Firenze but still inside the Città Metropolitana, the metropolitan area of the city. Roads, industrial areas and connections make it possible to receive materials, move furniture and reach sites: the territory acts as infrastructure, not only as a landscape of hills. The proximity to Firenze keeps skills and clients within reach, while the position outside offers spaces more compatible with an articulated production.

This double belonging explains L’ARTES better than any image of a workshop frozen in time. The firm carries an urban training with it and organises it in a place where it can take another scale. Firenze stays a reference for repertoires, but the furniture is designed for houses and buildings that exist now, often far away. The territory does not oblige anyone to reproduce it: it offers a starting language and a working network, and the design decides how to translate them without turning them into stage scenery.

A villa and a hotel ask for different timescales

In residential work the conversation can concentrate on one family, on its habits and on its relation with a specific architecture. In hospitality you get repeated rooms, site calendars, teams, resistance to intensive use and maintenance entrusted to different people: the same detail can be right in a villa and too fragile in a hotel. Complex commissions require working drawings, numbered components, approved samples and revision control, because one change in a typical room multiplies and a delay in the hardware can hold up assembly and finishing.

Bespoke work starts much earlier, in front of a room that rarely corresponds to a perfect rectangle. Walls out of square, floors that are not level, skirtings, sockets, doors, radiators and cornices set the constraints, and an accurate survey records dimensions and also assembly sequences: whether an element comes through the door, whether it can be turned, where it will be fixed without meeting a service. When the furniture is thought of only as a frontal image, the problems come out on site, where correcting costs money and can compromise the finish.

Transport is a stage of construction too. A piece can leave the department perfect and arrive damaged if it has not been designed to be moved: weight, centre of gravity, projecting elements, glass, marble and delicate surfaces ask for packing and gripping points, doors and drawers have to be secured, removable parts identified, the crates have to pass through real openings. Conservative guidance recommends lifting a piece from its structurally strong points and avoiding the dragging that stresses legs and joints, but on site a general rule is not enough: whoever designed the piece should say where it can be held and in what order it goes together. A cornice that projects a long way can be splendid and impossible to protect, a monolithic body may simply not pass.

All of this has a price, and the price also measures the risk of customisation. In a standard product many costs are spread over a series; in bespoke work the survey, the drawing, the samples and the setting up fall on one specific commission, and a variation asked for late can force components that are already finished to be made again. The quotation has to describe boundaries, materials, finishes and approval stages: the client understands what is included, the workshop can spend time without financing uncertainty indefinitely. If the hours of carving, preparation and assembly are treated as romantic surplus, the craft survives only as long as somebody agrees not to be paid.

The sample stops words pretending to be precise

“Warm”, “antiqued”, “matt”, “slightly worn” are intelligible in a conversation and too elastic for a production. The sample translates those words onto a real support: it shows colour, ground, grain, degree of sheen and the way a patina settles into the relief. It has to be big enough for the surface to be read, and identified with the materials and the date.

Approval does not remove every variation, because woods and hand processes respond differently, the light in the room changes the perception and an extended surface can look more intense. But a shared reference is needed to tell a physiological difference from a result outside the design. The sample does not replace the drawing, because it holds no dimensions and no joints: it completes its language on the side of the material.

It is also the point where showroom and workshop stay connected. At Sambuca the client meets finished settings and pieces, and compares lines, surfaces and proportions at a scale close to use; but the exhibited result risks making the causes that produced it invisible. The workshop keeps those causes: boards, working drawings, jigs, tools, grounds, colour trials, components waiting. A craft business grows when it manages to distinguish the functions without creating two truths, one for selling and one for making.

Keeping the samples serves long after delivery, too. A lacquered surface, a gold leaf, a waxed wood and a varnished top are not maintained in the same way, and wood does not need to be “fed” indiscriminately with oils or sprays: some products leave build-up, alter the varnish or make future work harder. Water, direct light and marked swings in humidity can damage wood and finishes. Stating precisely which cycle was used, keeping the hinges accessible and the parts replaceable reduces the need for invasive intervention: durability is not promised by the adjective “handcrafted”, it is prepared through choices that let the object be looked after.

The sheet keeps the revisions

Today L’ARTES is led by the second generation, and the family handover is often told as the safekeeping of models. It is one part of it, but not the hardest. Keeping a method means understanding why a proportion worked, which stages absorbed time, where a mistake repeated itself and which skills cannot be replaced by a data sheet. The generation coming in finds a business already recognised and a more complex economic responsibility: it has to manage international clients, sites, digital images, logistics and contemporary requests without reducing the workshop to an executing department.

Continuity does not ask anyone to replicate 1968. The common method is not the obligatory presence of an ornament: it is the relation between design, construction and surface. The second generation inherits the task of keeping those stages close enough to still correct one another, and it can widen forms and tools as long as it keeps the ability to judge the result on the wood.

The sheet, after all, keeps the revisions. A dimension changed, a cornice lightened or a module split for transport leave a trace that can be shared with whoever builds and whoever will install, and they stop a decision from staying only in the head of the person who took it. Revisions have to be numbered and have to genuinely supersede the ones before: in a commission with many elements, working on two versions of the same front produces errors that manual skill cannot compensate for. The workshop needs to know which drawing is valid, which samples are approved and which measurements come from the latest survey.

This discipline can look distant from the workshop of 1968, and instead it prolongs its essential principle: making an intention transmissible before anyone removes material. Before the gouge come the survey, the function, the choice of the wood, the sections and the joints; after it come grounds, colour, gilding, transport, assembly and maintenance. Carving occupies a decisive point, but not an isolated one. The piece leaves, travels, enters a room and begins to be used: precisely for that reason it has to have been thought through well.

What remains of the gesture is not the quantity of shavings, but the form able to carry light, weight and time. The drawing offers a limit to the hand, the hand verifies the drawing, the territory makes the organisation possible, the client brings a real measure. The craft is born from their agreement and continues every time the piece, now far from the bench, keeps the precision with which it was imagined.