Foundry Life
Sometimes I feel like I’m in a bit of a surreal environment, and I don’t think it is just my partial italian only understanding part of what is going on. It becomes far more surreal as I understand more.
Little Carlo in the wax casting room was 8kgs when he was born – that is over 17lb! (He definitely wasn’t little then, and still isn’t!)
Alfredo was telling me how he likes eating raw garlic and bread. However one day he accidentally ate his mother’s black tulip bulbs! (he pollished off 2 of them even though he thought they tasted a bit strange…)
Yesterday I learnt a new word: Campanilisma – from Campanile, the bell tower that every town has. I was asking Ste and Carlo if they were both from Pietrasanta, and Ste wound up Carlo by telling me that the later had actually been born in Camaiore (the nearest town, only about 20mins away). Pietrasanta and Camaiore have a lot of rivalry, also know as Campanilisma.
The other thing I find amusing in the foundry is the different taste in music in each area. In our wax room we tend to have slightly slushy music – we’ve even had ‘dipinto di blu’! yes, they are still playing it. And another current favourite is ‘da mi tua amore, chiedere mi niente, ho bisogna di te’ yes, lots of love, and then something about green eyes. And to this the artigiani carefully retouch and smooth wax sculptures.
In the wax casting room they are doing more manual work, using the gantry crane to lift and empty moulds full of wax and welding external armatures together. They tend to have more rock and contemporary pop, which also tend to be english speaking music (generally better!).
However, the large metal workshop downstairs has far more pumping music, to go with the sound of hammering metal and angle grinders – the other day they had Dizzy Rascal’s ‘some people call me crazy…’, and this morning they had some pumping harsh italian rap, which really made me smile as I walked past up the stairs.
All in all, I feel very at home in the foundry, and it is sad to think that I’m already over a 1/3 through my stay here.
In other news – tomorrow evening there is a big meeting in town about the future of Pietrasanta for Artists and Artisans. It is organised by some artists who are worried that the local council are forcing most of the marble workshops in town to close. Apparently 15 years ago you would hear the sound of marble being worked all over town, but now is it only in a few places. I get the impression it is due to a combination of new laws about health and safety standards and noise polution, along with the increasing affluence in the town due to tourism encouraging properties to be redeveloped for restaurants or chic appartments.
Anyway, I’ll probably let you know more about this later.
