The 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 craftsman hollowed the piece out from the inside. At the start there is a solid mass; then the rampino (the hooked turning iron) enters the cavity, the lathe sets the block turning, and the wall begins to thin.

If too much material stays, the light stops inside the stone and the object looks heavy, opaque, different from what was designed. If too much is taken away, the wall loses strength: it can chip while it is being worked, break during assembly, or fail to take a knock that a more correct thickness would have absorbed. Between these two mistakes there is a point where form, solidity and translucency manage to coexist.

The alabaster worker’s craft lives at that point. It is not only knowing how to remove material: it is recognising the exact moment when you have to stop.

It is not a more obliging marble

White alabaster can look like marble. It can be smoothed to a surface that is even, luminous and apparently solid, and in some pieces the resemblance is so close that works held in museums have been attributed to the wrong material. But Volterra alabaster is not marble: it is a fine, compact variety of gypsum, made mainly of calcium sulphate dihydrate, while white marble is made above all of calcite, that is calcium carbonate.

The difference is not only the chemical formula: the two materials react differently to tools, to knocks, to water, to heat and to cleaning. Marble is harder; alabaster takes a cut more easily, but it is vulnerable to scratches, to chipping and to improper contact with damp. Hardness, after all, describes above all resistance to scratching: a material can be easy to cut and at the same time break under pressure or a blow.

Polishing can make this stone look hard, like milky glass. The surface deceives. Under that shine there is still a soft, fragile material, and soft does not mean forgiving: it means the tool goes in fast, even when it should not.

The relative softness of alabaster allows it to be worked with tools that sometimes resemble those used on wood: it can be sawn, turned, hollowed, scraped, pierced and finished with a precision that makes hair, folds, leaves, feathers and minute decoration possible. This willingness of the material is often mistaken for ease of the craft.

But a material that gives way fast demands control that is just as fast. On a harder stone a weak stroke may leave almost no mark; on alabaster the wrong pressure immediately takes off more material than intended, and a badly transmitted blow reaches a thin section and breaks it away. The speed at which the material answers cuts down the time available to notice the mistake, and the stone, which seems obliging because it offers no resistance, does not protect the craftsman from his own hand. Precision is not applying more force: it is recognising how much force is needed before the material has already answered.

The design begins in the arnione

Alabaster is not quarried as a continuous, uniform slab. In the deposits around Volterra it usually occurs as ovoid masses, known locally as arnioni, enclosed in clay and gypsum formations. Every arnione has its own size, its own colour, its own internal structure.

The traditional vocabulary separates different varieties: scaglione is generally white and translucent, agata takes tones running from yellow to brown, bardiglio shows veining and colour in grey, beige or orange, pietra a marmo has a pale ground crossed by finer veins, cinerino is greyer and more opaque. These are not colours to choose from a sample card: each variety changes the relationship between design, thickness, working and light.

Even two blocks of the same variety are not identical: the veins change direction, impurities gather at one point, one part is denser and another less even. There are also defects the surface does not let you see: in the quarrymen’s vocabulary mandragole are hard inclusions that interrupt the uniformity of the stone, case are fissures able to make part of a block unusable, and aggressive extraction — above all when it needs explosives — can rintronare the alabaster, leaving fine internal cracks. So a block reaches the workshop showing only part of its own history: the rest will emerge when it is cut. That is why choosing the material is already design work. The craftsman does not only decide what he wants to make, he has to work out whether that stone will let him.

The sculptor, the turner and the ornatista, the carver of ornament, may all be preceded by the squadratore (the squarer), whose job is not to cut a large block into handier pieces. He has to judge how much stone is needed, how to set the cut, which part of the arnione suits the intended object. Measurements are transferred onto the material with instruments such as the seste, the calipers; the block can be cut with the traditional trincione saw, with a band saw or with a disc saw.

Every cut creates one possibility and destroys others. A portion set aside for a vase can no longer become a sculpture, and a cut that crosses a vein badly opens up a hidden discontinuity. Too much stone left for safety will have to be removed later, adding time and waste; too little cannot be put back. The craft begins with a decision the public will never see: the finished object shows the part that was chosen, not all the other shapes that first cut made impossible.

Light is a measurement

A vase has an outer surface everyone sees and an inner one that is almost always hidden, and the turner has to build both. After the first roughing out the piece is fixed to the lathe, and the rotation lets its profile be worked with the rampini, which differ in shape, in length and in the direction of the cut: some rough down the outside, others enter the cavity and remove material from within. The seste help to keep form and thickness under control, and the tenta checks the depth reached.

The difficulty is not only obtaining a regular curve: the two surfaces have to advance together without meeting. The outside defines the visible volume, while the inside sets the weight, the thickness and the amount of light that will be able to cross the wall. A wall can look even from outside and still hold, inside, areas that are too thick or dangerously thin. So the turner works on one shape he can see and one he has to measure, and every pass of the rampino changes both.

Translucency, in any case, is not an effect applied at the end. It belongs to the structure of the stone, to its purity, to its veins, to the finish of the surface and to the thickness the light has to cross. A very thick block can look almost opaque; a thinner wall lets the light spread, making visible shades that are far less obvious with the lamp switched off.

Lighting an alabaster object is therefore not a matter of staging it: it means exposing every decision taken while it was being worked. A difference in thickness becomes a variation in light, a vein reads darker, a thinner part more intense. These are not necessarily defects — they can be planned and used to build the drawing of the light — but they have to be governed. An uneven wall produces a deliberate movement of light or reveals uncontrolled work: from outside the two results look alike, and the difference lies in the intention and in being able to repeat it.

The alabaster worker does not work with light the way an electrician or a photographer would. He works it indirectly, by deciding how much stone it will have to cross. The final light is the measure of the material left behind.

Every piercing also removes support

The turner can hand the half-worked piece to the ornatista, who transfers the design onto the surface and cuts carvings, pierced work and decoration with drills, rasps, irons and scuffine. The scuffina is one of the most distinctive tools of the trade: its metal part, toothed like a saw, removes and finishes alabaster in places other tools would reach only with difficulty, and it comes in different shapes, suited to curves, hollows and detail.

In pierced work the void becomes decoration. But every void also removes part of the structure that was holding the piece up: a run of openings set too close weakens the wall, a bridge left too thin can snap during finishing, an internal corner handled badly concentrates the stress at a vulnerable point.

The design cannot therefore be separated from the strength of the material, and a line that looks perfect on paper can turn out impossible to carry over without changes. The ornatista does not simply execute a motif: he negotiates with the stone how much of that motif can become void without destroying what has to stay solid.

A model does not cancel the craft

A large part of the output of Volterra came from reproducing models. Classical statues, busts, vases, candelabra and furnishings were made in several copies long before the word serial became the commercial opposite of handmade. To carry the proportions of a sculpture from a plaster or clay model onto the block, the pantografo (the pointing machine) can be used: it fixes reference points and lets distances, volumes and relationships be transferred onto the piece to be carved.

The instrument does not complete the work: it shows where material will have to go. Between one point and the next all the interpretation remains, the step from a measurement to a surface, from a coordinate to a fold, from an abstract distance to the tension of a face. Mechanised pantografi can even rough out several copies at once, but the shape that leaves the machine is not yet a finished sculpture: it has to be checked, finished and adapted to the real character of the block.

The presence of a model does not remove the hand. It gives the hand a different problem. When the work is original the craftsman decides form and proportion directly; when it is a reproduction he has to reach recognisability without pretending that every block behaves the same way. Repetition is not necessarily the failure of craft, it can be one of its hardest skills: making a shape again means keeping what makes it recognisable while the material goes on changing.

The workshop was never one hand alone

The romantic account of craft prefers the isolated master: one man, one block, a few irons and a work that would be born from the encounter between an individual and his material alone. The alabaster workshop tells a different story. The squadratore prepares the block. The turner builds the round forms and hollows out their insides. The sculptor develops figures and volumes. The animalista specialises in the representation of animals. The ornatista cuts carvings and pierced work. Polishing completes the surface.

A single craftsman can know and carry out several stages, but historically production in Volterra was also organised through precise specialisation and collaboration between workshops. An object therefore passes through several hands before it is finished, and this does not weaken its identity: quality does not necessarily belong to one exceptional gesture, it can come from the continuity between different people, each able to understand what their own operation will hand on to the next.

The collaboration becomes clearest in complex pieces. The turner cannot plan a wall without considering the piercing the ornatista will have to cut. The squadratore cannot prepare the block while ignoring the final shape. Whoever polishes has to respect the details and edges built in the earlier stages. The craft is not only knowing how to do your own part: it is not compromising anyone else’s.

The last surface was often women’s work

Polishing decides how the public will see and touch the alabaster. It removes the roughness that is left, evens out the surface and lets the stone show depth and translucency. In historic practice it was a long process: the first abrasion could be done with dried shark skin, followed by passes with asprella, a marsh plant used in small bundles, and with ever finer compounds; final treatments based on waxes and other substances protected the piece and made it more velvety.

This work was almost always done by women, called lucidatrici, the polishers. It is a detail that changes the story of the workshop: the surface the buyer’s eye came to rest on was often the result of women’s work, far less celebrated than the sculptor’s. It did not simply add shine: it had to follow the curves, reach the hollows, avoid damaging the detail and make even an object that had passed through many earlier operations.

Today polishing uses machines, abrasive cloths and modern compounds, but the principle does not change. A surface does not only have to become smooth: it has to stay faithful to the form it covers.

The final stage brings out veins, depth and transparency that were almost invisible during roughing out, and it also makes clear what did not work. An internal fissure reaches the surface. A deep scratch resists the finest passes. An area worked unevenly reflects and spreads the light differently from the rest of the object. At that point, going on removing material to get rid of the defect changes proportions and detail.

Finishing is therefore not the moment when every problem is hidden under a bright surface. It is the last check. The stone looks softer, deeper, at times almost liquid, but polishing does not rebuild what was badly removed and does not close a fracture that is already there. The final beauty does not erase the process: it makes it easier to read.

The machine changes. The responsibility stays

The electric lathe has replaced the tornio a pertica, the pole lathe. In the traditional one a long pole fixed above the turner was connected to a treadle and to the piece by a cord, and the pressure of the foot produced an alternating movement, out and back; the turner worked standing, often resting the long handle of the rampino on his shoulder. Today the movement can be continuous and controlled by a motor, electric saws take over part of the work of the trincione, and cutters mounted on flexible arms reach the detail with less effort.

These tools do not automatically make the work less a matter of craft: they change the kind of control it demands. A motor holds a steady rotation, but it can take off material much faster. A cutter reduces the effort, but it amplifies the consequences of a wrong movement. A saw makes a precise cut, but it does not decide where that cut should pass.

The useful question is not whether the craftsman uses a machine: it is who takes the decisions that determine the result. When the process stays under the control of a skill able to read the material, the machine becomes a tool; when the decisions are removed and only automatic repetition is left, the nature of the work changes. Tradition is not the obligatory preservation of every hardship of the past: it is the preservation of responsibility.

An ancient tradition is not a continuous line

Between the end of the fourth and the first century before Christ Etruscan craftsmen used the local stone above all for funerary urns, and the Museo Etrusco Guarnacci (Volterra’s Etruscan museum) holds hundreds of them, many carved, painted or gilded: not all the urns in the museum are alabaster, but it is in alabaster that the museum places the highest quality of production. But this relationship with the material did not continue without interruption for three thousand years: during the Middle Ages the use of alabaster almost disappeared, and the real revival came in the second half of the sixteenth century, when the stone was used again for tabernacles, candelabra, holy water stoups and other works of sacred art.

Then came vases, busts, classical reproductions, lamps and objects for private houses, and in the nineteenth century production grew on a far wider scale, with organised firms, drawing schools, catalogues and international trade. Calling this tradition thousands of years old is correct; calling it fixed or unbroken is not. The continuity does not lie in having always done the same things in the same way: it lies in the fact that, at different moments, someone decided that this stone could still become work.

The history of alabaster does not support the idea that authentic craft has to exist far from trade either. At the end of the eighteenth century the Fabbrica Inghirami organised production aimed at an international market, setting a school of drawing, ornament and sculpture alongside the workshop, and in the following century the workshops of Volterra made objects for Italian and foreign customers, adapting models and decoration to the taste of different markets.

The so-called viaggiatori dell’alabastro, the alabaster travellers, carried the work out of the city, looked for buyers, opened outlets and organised auctions. They were not tourists sent out to tell the story of a tradition: they were traders taking the risk of choosing a town, transporting fragile objects and finding a public able to buy them. Being able to sell was not something outside the craft: it was what allowed the workshops to go on existing.

Craft does not become false when it meets a market: it becomes fragile when it can no longer find one.

After the sale, the stone stays vulnerable

A polished surface can make you forget the nature of the material. Alabaster stays sensitive to knocks, to scratches, to water and to unsuitable cleaning products: a ring, a metal utensil or an abrasive sponge can mark the surface, and damp can encourage stains and alterations, above all when the object has no adequate protective finish. It should not automatically be treated like marble, glass or ceramic.

Care also depends on the type of polish, on the waxes and on the other treatments the maker applied: the craftsman’s instructions are part of the object as much as the packaging and the certificate of origin. Without specific instructions the safest course is to avoid harsh detergents and improvised operations, removing dust with soft, dry tools.

The word stone does not guarantee duration. An object can cross centuries if it is treated in a way compatible with its own material, and it can be damaged in a few minutes by a cleaning carried out with good intentions and the wrong products. The alabaster worker’s job ends when the object leaves the workshop: responsibility for the material passes to whoever owns it.

Protecting a name is not enough

Regione Toscana (the regional government of Tuscany) has entered alabastro di Volterra among the typical non-food craft and industrial productions tied to the territory. The recognition matters: it gives a public name to a productive heritage and creates the conditions for protection, promotion and training. But a list does not know how to use a scuffina.

A museum can keep a tornio a pertica, the tools, the models and the works, and it can explain who the squadratori, the turners, the ornatisti and the lucidatrici were. It cannot automatically turn that heritage into new people able to practise the craft. Few traditional workshops are left in Volterra: some work with contemporary artists and designers, others run courses, workshops and visits, and they go on making objects to order, sculptures, lamps and furnishings.

The problem is not keeping every workshop identical to the one that came before. It is making it economically and professionally possible for someone still to learn alabaster well enough to build a future on it. Transmission needs time, raw material, tools, masters who are available and apprentices who can afford to stay; above all it needs real work. A craft does not survive only because it is shown: it survives when it is commissioned, paid for, practised and taught.

The point where you stop

At the start the arnione holds many possible shapes. Every cut removes some of them, every pass of the rampino reduces the thickness, every piercing turns a solid part into a void, every abrasive takes off an almost imperceptible amount of surface. The object comes into being through a sequence of subtractions, but not everything that can be removed should be removed.

A wall needs enough material to hold. An ornament has to keep supports able to carry it. A sculpture has to keep the volume that makes a fold, a face or a hand come alive. The light too needs something to remain: if it met no more stone we would not see the translucency of alabaster, we would simply see an opening.

The alabaster worker does not release a light that was imprisoned in the block. He builds the condition that lets it pass through. He removes material until the stone begins to let through what it held back before, and then he has to stop. That is the moment when the craft becomes visible.

The light arrives when the hand stops.