Like Walking on Water, Venetian Style: Rolando Segalin's Gondola Shoes

The witty and beautiful gondola shoes of Rolando Segalin now featured in the window of Antichità Barzaghi

 

If you're going to happen upon a pair of vintage hand-made gondola-shaped shoes someplace in Venice I suppose it's only appropriate that they be in the window of an antique shop located beside Venice's famous boating supply store Nikolaj (established 1923). 

The striking pair of shoes are the work of one of Venice's greatest 20th century artisans, Rolando Segalin, who died in 2014 at the age of 82, but whose atelier-- just a stone's throw from Campo San Luca and close to the Bacino Orseolo (gondola central just off Piazza San Marco)--remains the site of exquisite shoemaking, now done by his one-time apprentice  Daneila Ghezzo.

Segalin himelf is the subject of a book, Storie de un calegher, published in 2018, and the inspiration for the Premio Rolando Segalin (a poster for which, seen above, features his gondola shoes) given each year to Venice's most promising artisans. A pair of the shoes were purchased by Toronto's Bata Shoe Museum for its permanent collection.

The pair of Segalin's gondola shoes in the image at the top of this post--the most famous of a variety Segalin's creations inspired by the reintroduction of Carnevale in Venice in 1979--are in the window of the shop Antichità Barzaghi (along with a number of other beautiful non-footwear items, I should note). 

If you're interested in purchasing them you can contact the shop's proprietor, Alberto Barzaghi, at a.barzaghi24@gmail.com. 

Segalin's gondola shoes were also featured in the above poster for an evening celebrating the life and work of the maestro, whose panel of presenters included philosopher and critic, and former mayor of Venice, Massimo Cacciari.

Venice In Miniature: Bottega di Pre

A grouping of four different buildings and stone bridge (photographed last year)

 

The Bottega di Pre, located just a few yards off of Campo Santa Maria Formosa, has an array of striking hand-made objects in it, all created by its proprietor (whose name, I must admit, I've forgotten), but my personal favorite are the matchbox-sized buildings and bridges and gondolas of Venice you can see in the images above and below. Cast of solid resin and hand-painted, they have a satisfying mass to them when held in the hand, and combine two or three or more of them in a grouping and you have a 3-D Venice on your table top (or under your Christmas tree) with all of what Ruskin praised as the distinctive "Irregularity" of the actual city itself.

I last spoke to the artisan a year ago when purchasing some buildings, and have always meant to return and do a post on him and his shop. But when I stopped by recently I found that he appears to be (understandably enough, given the absence of foot traffic) keeping his shop closed during the pandemic: a sign on the shop door directs people to his online site, where you can see not just his Venetian buildings but his hot air balloons and small scale library interiors (which I think Jorge Luis Borges would have appreciated), masks, Christmas decorations, and other unique objects: https://www.facebook.com/bottegadipre/?ref=page_internal. 

On that site you can also inquire about purchases. I've not encountered any other hand-made objects of Venice, small-scale and affordable, that so effectively suggest something of the actual experience of the city.  

 

A view of the current window display in the Bottega di Pre

A Light In the Dark: La Mascareta in Calle del Tentor

Since the end of the summer the calli I take through Santa Croce to pick up our son from school have been emptying out. First, the already-reduced number of tourists I passed (all from Europe) thinned and then zeroed out as the coronavirus re-surged; then the shops and businesses along my usual route (like everywhere in the city) were vacated: one of the best gelaterie in the city near San Stae, a well-established pastry shop, a respected upholsterer, restaurants and hotels... It was in this dispiriting context that the above image was taken, a dim light in the early dark of shortening days.

The shop is La Mascareta in Calle del Tentor, just around the corner from the church of Santa Maria Mater Domini as you head toward Campiello del Spezier. Its owner, Hama, is there at work each time I pass--a welcome sight.

Because of the huge number of fraudulent masks for sale online he prefers to sell directly from his shop, where the quality of his productions also distinguish them from the huge number of counterfeit masks being sold by hand in other shops around the city (he showed me today a recent news article about police discovering a stash of 42,000 such masks made abroad but labeled as being "Made in Venice"). And even the pandemic has not changed his feelings about this: he has his work to do, and will be ready for when visitors begin to return to the city.

In the mean time, if you are interested in buying an authentic mask hand-made and painted by a single artisan, you can contact him via his email: lamascareta@outlook.it  

Like any other well-established artisan in Venice, he is experienced and adept at shipping his works securely all over the world.

Hama poses with what he told me remains (even since the pandemic) his favorite mask: the plague doctor, in its traditional form (in his right hand) and an ornate version (in left)

 

Hama told me it's interesting to observe that people from different countries tend to be drawn to a different range of masks: the French, for example, tend to be inclined toward masks that I'd describe as softer-tinted and romantically-illustrated, while many from Japan are first struck by masks whose ornamentation takes the form of an almost jewelry-like surface.

Not Your Granny's Tableware: The Ceramics of Alessandro Merlin

 

Just about 50 meters from the church of San Martino, after you've crossed the iron Ponte Storto and followed Calle Pestrin as it curves away from Rio de la Ca' en Duo and heads in the direction of Piazza San Marco, you arrive at the bottega of ceramicist Alessandro Merlin. At the sight of a poor wretch with no protection from the harsh elements, San Martino famously cut his cloak in half to share it with him. But when it comes to uncloaking themselves the human figures in Merlin's work don't settle for half measures--and, boy, do the fellas look happy to see you! (or to be seen, as the case may be).

 

The assured yet whimsical line with which his figures are rendered might remind you of some of Picasso's menagerie and of his erotic works, but Merlin's animals tend to the aquatic, in keeping with Venice, and the mythology animating his erotica is of a much more recent vintage than Picasso's ancient minotaurs and goddesses: it's the classic beefcake and cheesecake pin-ups of the second half of the 20th century. 

 

Born in Piemonte, raised in Belluno, Merlin opened his bottega in Venice 25 years ago. Like nearly everyone in Venice (and not only in Venice) the pandemic has impacted both his life and livelihood. In the latter case, the more adventurous visitors who used to venture beyond Piazza San Marco and the Rialto Bridge, and the afficianados of contemporary art who walked to and from the Biennale, have disappeared. And as Merlin admits to having little expertise and equally little interest in website construction he does not have an online store.

But that doesn't mean his one-of-a-kind pieces can't be ordered even now. He's experienced in shipping his pieces all over the world, so you need only contact him via his email address about purchasing something. He does not ship the large plates, but all of his cups and saucers, the mugs, serving trays and so forth can be (and have been) securely packed and shipped.

 

To inquire about ordering contact him at a.merlin@hotmail.it

Alessandro Merlin in his studio behind the display floor; at the right of the photo is his ceramic oven in which he fires his cups, saucers, smaller plates and trays

Surprises of a prickly sort sometimes await the drinker of coffee from one of Merlin's cups

 

In Merlin's shop window you can find an array of cups of which the great 16th-century writer (and Venetian resident) Pietro Aretino would certainly have approved

 

An example of one of Merlin's larger plates (which brings to mind the opening stanza of Yeats's "Sailing to Byzanium" about "The young in one another's arms... / The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, / Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long /Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.")

Merlin's shop window on Calle del Pestrin

Burano Lace: The End of the Line

The first day I met A., in his father's lace shop not far from Piazza San Marco, he tossed off in passing: "This place will be a museum soon, not a store."

The location of the store seems a little museum-like as it is, composed of two separate showrooms (on slightly different levels) tucked away, grotto-like, off the worn stone entrance halls of a 16th-century palazzo. A's father has owned and operated the shop in this same location since 1958.

Recently his father, Signor L, stated things more explicitly: "In about ten years there will be no more Burano lace being made."

The youngest of the masters who make the lace for their store, he explained, is 75 years old.

"What about the lace schools I see advertised?" I asked. "Aren't younger people learning to make it?"

He shook his head, said, "Those people are learning a hobby. It is not the same."

He estimated that 98% of the lace, and 60% of the glass, for sale in Venetian shops is made in China. He carries Chinese machine-made lace in his own shop because sometimes that's what people want, but he keeps it sequestered in a windowless, almost closet-like space all its own far from the main showroom, and does not pretend it's something it is not. At first, he said, the quality of such lace wasn't too bad for being machine made, but it has gotten worse. However for those who want to buy a lace tablecloth in Venice, such lace is often the only type they can afford. Though he does carry some smaller tablecloths and table settings partially hand-made in Tuscany that are quite reasonable.

A restauranteur I once met while working in a New York bookstore advised me never to eat cheap sushi or sashimi because the quality of fish needed for it does not come cheap--and he said he'd hate to know the origin or age or state of the cut-rate stuff.

Real lace also does not come cheap.

A circular work of Burano lace just large enough to serve as a coaster for a beer bottle costs 200 euro and represents a week of labor. A work of Bobbin lace--a different method practiced on the island of Pellestrina south of Lido--about the size of a small salad plate costs 150 euro. The small 30 euro pieces displayed with signs of "Hand Made" in shop windows around the Piazza and elsewhere (including Burano itself) may in fact have been made manually, but far far away from the Venetian lagoon.

No matter how high the cost of Burano (or Pellestrina) lace, the economics simply don't work out anymore.  There's just not enough money in it for the skill and time put into each piece. There aren't enough people around who appreciate the craft enough to pay for the labor.

My friend A. says that Japanese visitors to Venice are an exception. They're familiar enough with Chinese lace to recognize what makes Burano lace so special. And of course there are the very rich, like international art star Mathew Barney and his Indie-rock star/actress wife, Bjork, who can spring for an authentic full-scale Burano tablecloth (which they had dyed black).

Something that always catches my eye when I visit the shop are the small framed pieces of old Burano lace. They are floral elements, ranging in size from just a bit larger than a man's thumbnail to just a bit smaller than the palm of one's hand, cut out of damaged remnants made in the 19th Century or earlier. The gauge of thread used back then has not been manufactured for quite some time. It's truly gossamer.

The other day Signor L noticed me peering at one of these small scraps and motioned me over to a display table. He opened a drawer, took out a small bundle, then carefully unfolded a perfectly-preserved 200-year-old Burano lace table runner.

"You almost never find a whole piece like this anymore," he said. "They have all been cut up."

He had acquired this one about a dozen years ago from a local woman selling off the possessions of a recently-deceased elderly relative.

It was amazing, with all the complexity and depth of design for which Burano lace is famous. It was impossible to take it all in at once. You had to read it like a novel, taking the time to follow out the development of each of its main themes. Finally I found myself fixed on the most attenuated line of floral ornamentation stretched like a spider's trail between major motifs: garlands of tiny flowers made of that thin-gauge thread long unavailable. Each three-dimensional flower just four tiny petal-shaped loops of a single airy thread around a spherical center formed, incredibly, of smaller rounder loops. It was hard to imagine the person who had worked on such a scale.

I wondered about the cost of this piece, but couldn't bring myself to ask that. Instead, as a preliminary, I asked, "Will you sell this?"

"No, no," Signor L said quickly. "Never. This is mine."