Artisanship of the past and the present
“Craftsmanship” and “Made in Italy” are two expressions that often go together and are associated with each other. When thinking about the long history of artisanship that has developed in Italy throughout centuries of dedication to the arts – something that made the peninsula famous outside on a global scale, and that has been supporting the economy both directly and indirectly – it is not hard to imagine it amplifying the touristic appeal of the country.
Every region in Italy was able to flourish in some specific field and became known for it; let’s think about the lutes of Cremona or the masks of Venice, just to cite a couple examples. Rome has had a major role, together with a few other Italian cities as points of concentration and development of the arts. The reason can be easily connected to the presence of the Vatican and its role in attracting artists and sponsoring the creation of objects of value.
But what is the panorama of craftsmanship in Rome today? This is the question that I seek to answer, asking directly those living in and dealing with this reality every day: the craftsmen. The research presents real testimonies of artisans that have experienced and still experience the difficulties of competing with a world that moves toward automatization and homogenization. They fight against the processes of mass production and consumption that devalue the significance of the human experience and labor involved in the process of creation. The project centers less on numbers and more on the narrations of those involved and their perception of the current and possible future of artisanship in Rome.
The artisans
The protagonists of the project are a group of artisans based in Rome and aged between 60 and over 80 years old. They all have studied and learned their craft in Rome and have always carried out their practices in the city, some of them in what are now the old districts of Rome that were once filled with artisans’ shops. Their professions ranged from jewelry- and shoe-making to painting and furniture restoration, and also the creation of art pieces from marble. The pool of interviewees has been established on the voluntary will of the participants, once they had been approached by me and informed about the scope of the research. All the participants showed great enthusiasm for their involvement in the project and passionately contributed to its realization.
The number of participants is relatively limited, a consequence of the decreasing number of active artisans in Rome and their pessimistic beliefs about the future of artisanship, as some of the non-participants stated.
The importance of craftsmanship
To preserve artisanship does not only mean to protect and pass on tradition and knowledge, but also to take a stand against consumption trends that disrespect the environment and prompt alienation from nature. The rediscovery of “doing things with our hands” is a way of reconnecting the human experience with the world surrounding us, while respecting it and its possibilities. The craftsmanship helps recenter the role of humans and their labor in the production process, reclaiming the time and effort, together with the fatigue, study, and knowledge, that are needed in the development of the skills necessary to exercise an artisan job. When asked about the significance of their practices, all the interviewees brought the conversation to the contact with the materials, which directly connects the maker to the object.
In the statements they stressed how fundamental the connection with this material culture is; it is not only a vessel to rediscover a sense of humanity and participation that connects people, but also a cardinal step in the learning process, a way of acquiring knowledge that cannot be substituted.
Craftsmanship is a practice that requires a high level of skills and understanding of the materials and of how to mold them. These can only be learnt through a close relationship with the tangible components of the craft, guided by the experience of a maestro that has already mastered the tradition.
Traditional techniques are a medium of culture preservation. To protect a tradition is to adapt it to current trends and developments, allowing it to take a form that better suits modern societies, while still maintaining what made it special and worthy of being passed on: the already mentioned connection with the authenticity and physicality of labor, and the capacity to bring together and build bridges across generations. The need for a teacher and a student, for a maestro and an apprentice, requires the inevitable relationship between someone “of the past” and “someone of the future”, someone who is able and willing to acquire expertise and passion through study and hard work.
Craftsmanship and alienation
Handmade products are an outcome of human labor and therefore will inevitably carry some kinds of distortions and errors. Every piece will always be somehow different from the others. This should not be a reason to discard these objects, but rather recognize the imperfection as an attribute that gives character and soul to every single piece. What makes handmade products special is their uniqueness, in comparison to serialized productions that put out identical and “perfect” creations for all to have. Thus, handmade products go against the growing trend among the majority of societies to look for homogeneity and standardization, instead of valuing diversity.
Our current reality is overflowing with stimuli and mechanized productions, and it is rapidly desensitizing the human population and distancing us from the real world. People, especially in the younger generations, do not tend to see what is not advertised on a screen and do not recognize the value and beauty of things that show flaws as testimonies of their tie to humanity.
The work of the artisan is increasingly devalued as we are only interested in the product and not in what is behind it. Consequently we underappreciate manual work in favor of goods that are easy to produce and easy to replace.
Many interviewees said their work is often undervalued by their clientele: people look for cheap and fast solutions to their requests and the artisan is frequently forced to make compromises to meet the customers’ needs and the demands.
Artisanship, other than retaining great cultural value, also had a fundamental social role in the past that today is being lost. Artisans used to overflow the streets of Rome, providing sites for social exchange and building of networks. Craftsmen highly value the relationship with the client. It helps them understand what the customer wants and directs them to a solution that can also permit the artisans to better display their capabilities and creativity. It allows them to guide the consumer with their counsel. The value of the object then lies in it becoming the material medium for cultural and social connections between the producer and the consumer.
Instead, craftsmen are being presented with requests that diminish their involvement in the creation process and are more and more being treated like machines, only there to satisfy a request.
Artisans and the environment
As already mentioned, the practice of artisanship requires an in-depth knowledge of the materials used for the production of goods that are personalized and customized to suit the clientele’s desires while respecting the materials and their availability. The artisan knows the material that is being used; the craftsman’s job requires great periods of time and resources that cannot be wasted, both for their cost and possible scarce availability. This deeply affects the fabrication process, moving it toward a responsible use and reuse of the resources to cut down the costs of production. The market of handmade products therefore exists in contrast to exaggerated product waste, overconsumption and exploitation of the land resulting in overuse and pollution.
Craftsmanship produces goods of higher quality and duration that do not need to be constantly replaced, utilizing materials that can also be recuperated and reused.
Craftsmanship is not only the art of being able to create things, but also that of fixing and restoring. Artisanship, then, offers yet another opportunity for investing in practices that respect our environment, breathing new life into objects and, as a consequence, eliminating the need for a new one. Through restoration artisans prevent waste of products and materials, help decrease pollution of the environment and also continue facilitating connection between people through their product. Compared to the expense of repurchasing the item, the possibility of repairing and transforming the product presents the consumer with a cheaper option. Additionally, it shifts the focus from the product itself to the ability of the artisan, and thus, to human manual labor.
To reiterate, this reconnection can bring us back to a deeper care and understanding of our environment followed by a more profound awareness of the unsustainability of the majority of our current practices. As a result, it can lead us to adopt more responsible consumption habits.
Why NOT craftsmanship?
To ensure the continuation of these traditions, it is crucial to invest in the involvement of the Roman youth and younger generation of workers. The artisans that are still active today face a problem: they need someone to pass their practices on to. Today artisanship is regarded as a lower level profession, and young workers are not incentivized to pursue a career in this field due to the lack of exposure to the disciplines and the not so profitable economic prospects.
Craftsmanship is a profession that allows the “maker” to express their creativity. It gives great satisfaction as one can see the results of fatigue and hard work, but it is also true that this can only be possible if there is passion, and a passion can either grow on its own or be discovered. In order to bring people closer to the realities of artisanship and encourage involvement in these fields, it is necessary to provide spaces where they can experience them. In Rome, there are no impactful programmes that educate children and teenagers in a more nature-oriented way of living with the goal of shortening the distance that internet culture is interposing between people and reality. During my research, the decreasing engagement of young workers in the fields of artisanship also emerged in the difficulty of finding craftsmen from the younger generations and in older artisans’ struggle to recruit apprentices (due to a lack of time, resources, and interested people).
From the interviewees’ statements, family emerged as the main actor in introducing them to the world of craftsmanship and tying the artisans to their respective practices. Almost all interviewees came from families of artisans and learned the job from a family member who passed on not only their knowledge and experience but also their fondness for their art.
Nonetheless, the interviewees would not recommend their same career path to the children and other family members, mainly as a result of the economic difficulties that they are encountering. Once considered a secure career path, artisanship is now quite the opposite, mainly due to lower cultural and social involvement in craftsmanship.
This calls for an even greater intervention from the institutions which must find ways to relaunch and rediscover artisanship to preserve the tradition but also allow it to amalgamate with more modern technologies and trends, so as to make craftsmanship more accessible to a broader audience. In doing so, it is important to highlight the centrality of old masters in the teaching of crafts, as they possess the kind of knowledge that can only be acquired through experience. Moreover, it is necessary to not only enhance the role of craftsmanship in the market by adapting it to current needs, but also to improve the quality of the training process to ensure the continuity of original practices. Economic aid to artisan businesses is crucial, otherwise we risk losing a remarkable aspect of our culture.
Conclusions
The survival of craftsmanship and its history is crucial to reconnecting with our planet and deepening our understanding and respect for the environments surrounding us. The state is a crucial actor in the rediscovery of the beauty and value of artisanship, as it has the power to design educational programmes and initiatives encouraging the involvement of youths.
Crafts are the means through which the respect for labor and nature can be rediscovered, together with the construction of bridges across spaces and generations. To go global is also to go local, to preserve our differences so that we can share them. Today, craftsmen are an endangered species in a market dominated by the giants of industrialization.
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