Anghiari si racconta

I was born here, in Anghiari, so I am a genuine Anghiarese – I call myself ‘an Anghiarese DOC’. I was born, I can say, in an artisan workshop, because my father was an antiquarian and a furniture restorer, as were my grandfather and uncle. Yes, my father worked here, in this shop, where my brother (who is 2 years older than me) and I now work.

The family house is in Anghiari, in the historical centre, within the city walls, in the citadel. I went to school in Anghiari, to the art institute, where they taught woodworking and specialized in restoration. In those years the school was an important institute; now it has lost some of its prestige.

As a child, I saw my father doing woodwork and I liked what he managed to rescue, because basically what we do is, yes, creative handicraft, but it is also conservation, giving a new life to old furniture, giving furniture the possibility to continue having a use. There wasn’t any decision, I was born into it. Then, in the school near home they taught this job and so I continued on this path.

My parents still live in the house where I was born, in the historical centre. Many houses there are abandoned… I myself had to leave because renovating is very difficult, because of the bureaucracy and other things. It was simpler to move out of the historical centre. We must encourage young people to remain in the centre, with all possible policies; we must give them incentives to stay, otherwise it will be empty. Luckily, my brother still lives there, but now the house is too small, with 2 kids. We hope that they decide to stay. I live outside Anghiari, at Campo della Fiera, with my wife, Silvia, and our 2 children, Francesco and Alessandro, 8 and 6 years old.

The children’s future? … I hope it will not be in this job, because you have to make a lot of sacrifices – in part, this is because our society has lost the culture of antiquity, the appreciation of these things. And, now also for economic reasons, but I think it’s more a cultural issue. We rely on supermarkets, chain stores (no names!) where people can furnish the house cheaply, so now this job is more difficult.

Very few Anghiaresi, I must say, buy our furniture, but, in a way, it has always been like this, even when … perhaps because there were many antiquarians in Anghiari. Our customers primarily come from the cities. For example, an industrialist’s family buys a farmhouse in the countryside, they renovate it and they like to have period pieces. On the other hand, a local youngster who buys an apartment in Anghiari rarely will furnish it with antiques … perhaps they might add one or two pieces; if they have an old kitchen chest belonging to their grandmother, then they might have that restored, yes.

We are known all over Italy, because the Calli family, together with the Poggini family, we were the first antique dealers, not only in Anghiari, but in Tuscany. We have always sold our furniture in Rome, Milan, Naples, all over Italy. My uncle also had American clients, we made many shipments to America. And now, we have clients elsewhere in Europe.

There are changes, passing fashions, but I think that the appreciation of the antique will come back, because it is something to be valued, it is an important thing, it can’t end. In the meantime, we adapt a little to the fashion of the time. For example, dark coloured furniture is not popular anymore, so we …. see this old wood, dark, a bit reddish, that perhaps wouldn’t fit anymore in a modern house, we have plastered it and then painted it white, we have changed the surface and put on a top of pietra serena, sandstone… let’s say, we have made it more modern.

I’ll try to explain our work as simply as I can. Our main activity is restoration, which means taking an old object which, with time, has been damaged…. Objects come from antiquarian markets, or a private client might have it at their house and will bring it to us to restore. We rebuild the missing parts, using old wood, rather than new, so the final look of the object is not altered. Once it is rebuilt, we clean it and then we give it an old patina, always with traditional techniques. We might stain the wood, we make the patina with earth pigments such as terra di Siena, we use French polish and then we finish it with wax: this is the classical restoration of old furniture.

Then there could  be other interventions, what I call ‘requalification’: perhaps the piece is too damaged, it is a fragment, and from this fragment we can rebuild another object, a door frame can become a bookcase, a piece for a bedroom can become a cabinet for a bathroom, a closet under the sink … many transformations are possible. We also restore ceilings, beams, with modern techniques. We don’t make kitchen furniture, we don’t do carpentry. We make objects from fragments, we design a new piece, we make something, it could be a small cabinet for the kitchen or a bookcase for a living room, the headboard for a bed, with a fragment … things like this.

There was a time when there was a big economic crisis, not only in Anghiari, but all over Italy, and I must say that foreigners helped our sector a lot, because they bought houses, they renovated them and then our workshops in Anghiari worked a lot. Actually, here in Anghiari, luckily, we have felt the European and global economic crises less. Here is an example: in Città di Castello there was a boom in restoration of furniture 20-30 years ago, and 60-100 firms were opened. When the crisis arrived in Città di Castello, a big town which doesn’t have a a tourist vocation like Anghiari, nearly all those firms closed down. In Anghiari we survived a bit better.

So, in a way, foreigners have saved Anghiari. But I wouldn’t like it to become a city like Cortona, with only tourists. If all we had was tourism it could ruin our town, which has this medieval flavour (but that doesn’t mean we’re living in the Middle Ages!). It is important that the town continues to live through the relationships between citizens. If it were just a holiday place, empty in winter, it wouldn’t be good.

The foreigners who do come here are well integrated; we are a very vivacious population. Not everybody thinks like me, some don’t like it that in summer there are concerts, like the Southbank Sinfonia; they are irritated by the noise, they want to sleep, be left in peace, but this way of thinking is limited – anyway this is not the way I think.

What is special about Anghiari? This is my hometown, everything is special, I was born here, I have a special bond; there is little to say about this, it is my life. It is not that I haven’t ever stepped out of Anghiari …. I like the fact that this is a liveable place; the way of life is relaxed, not that frenetic rush one finds in cities.

I must say I had the good fortune to have parents who took me around the whole of Europe, the most important cities, and also some of the less important ones. I have seen many. We went to Monaco, Paris, Amsterdam, all over Europe, to Normandy, always following the art thread. They also took us on holidays in the mountains, in northern Italy, more so than holidays at the seaside. I still really like going to the mountains, even if I also like going to the beach. For financial reasons, now with the children, we travel less, but we still manage to do something, perhaps in Italy, always Rome, other cities, Venice. We are interested in art, monuments, architecture.

It is a strong bond, a blood bond that I have with Anghiari, just as I have a very strong bond with this job – this is also a bond. My grandfather always said to me ‘we raised our children in a drawer, our cradle was a drawer of a dresser’. Now we have prams, then they opened a drawer in the bedroom and put the baby inside the drawer with a blanket, like in a cradle. So, we know furniture from birth.