Reflections of Ca' Fornoni in 3 Crops

An old Murano vase in a color I haven't seen much of before: black (but with an almost purplish tinge in person). If I remember correctly I found it in the nice little shop Ambrus Antichità Venezia on Calle dei Cristi off of Campo San Cassian and paid, at most, 40 euro. But that shop also has, among other things, some very fine vintage pieces of Murano glass. It's worth stopping in.

 

 

Sighing Over Venice Is Nothing New, But Buying Is More Useful Right Now: Declare Leather Goods and Newstand

The Declare boutique on Calle Seconda dei Saoneri 2671 (photographed before the start of an event on 24 November 2019)

For over 200 years the troubles and ruination of the defunct Venetian Republic have put visitors in a philosophical mood (or at least a complacently, sweetly melancholic one), and with a new "plague" upon us it's little surprise that this old vein, overworked and exhausted though it's long been, would again become a destination for literistic pick-axers, as it is for Colm Toibin in the new issue of the London Review of Books. 

Deathly quiet calli, a sprinkling of rather unsatisfactory locals, untrafficked canals: all the usual elements are evoked once more to serve as a ground for the celebrated names and works of the distant past. You know the ones: Tintoretto, Titian, Veronese, Thomas Mann, Henry James....

Ah, inhale deeply of the autumnal air...

I have little patience for this kind of stuff.

To walk through Venice now is to walk past shop after shuttered shop, empty hotel and restaurant after empty hotel and restaurant--and not to reflect with a dulcet sigh on the aged Titian's last days in the plague-stricken Republic of 1576 but to wonder how all the people familiar to you by sight if not name from all these establishments are managing to support themselves and their families without a job.

Of course such hardships are, alas, not unique to Venice these days. But if Venice is on your mind and you find yourself in need of a gift--either for yourself or others--or in some instances, a necessity, I thought I'd put up some posts about Venetian shops that might interest you.

I'm not one to push consumerism, but the posts that follow are simply shops that I like and frequent, and whose proprietors in each case have impressed me with their knowledge of and, yes, even devotion to what they do, and the detailed attention they pay to what they produce. 

In the case of the shop Declare, just a short distance from the church of I Frari heading toward Campo San Polo, it was the colors and obvious quality of the leather of their bags and wallets that caught my eye as I passed by. But as I wasn't in need of either it was their magazine and journal wall that made me walk in.

In fact, the first two images of this post were taken in November 2019, when I was planning to do a post on the series of events being hosted in the shop, each of them featuring the editor(s) of a different art or cultural or intellectual journal carried on the wall. 

But then the holidays arrived, and then Covid arrived, and the event series had to be canceled and has not yet been able to be revived. 

The well-curated array of reading material on its wall continues to be worthy of a visit all its own if you are in the city. But if you are not, Declare's original line of bags, available for purchase online, is worth a look no matter where you live. 

The shop's owner, and the designer not only of the bags but now of a new line of original jewelry, Omar Pavanello, is a man who is as passionately knowledgeable about the materials and methods with which his lines are produced as he is about their form. The bags are hand-produced by artisans nearby on terraferma, and so committed is he to the quality of their production that you can easily find yourself in a detailed discussion of different dying and tanning methods of the leather itself. In fact, reminded by one of his bags of the feel an old Coach bag I bought back in the days (1980s) when that (now mass-marketed) line of leather goods was still produced in limited numbers in Manhattan, I found that Omar was such a fan of the quality of leather they used back then that he'd sought out and bought a couple of old examples as inspiration.

As the photo at the bottom of this post indicates, the newest line includes more colors than are depicted in the online store. If you are in the market for leather goods actually produced in Italy, just outside Venice, of the highest quality, please take a look at their online store, and contact them (by email or phone--English is spoken) to find out about new colors not yet shown on the site. 

And if you are in Venice--or the next time you are--by all means stop in the store.  

 (For more on Declare's partners, Omar and Anna, see the following 2018 article in the local paper La Nuova.)

Anna Tonti, partner of Omar Pavanello in Declare (left), interviews Michaela Büsse, editor of Migrant journal on 24 November 2019 (The six issue run of the Migrant journal is itself very much worth checking out--focusing on a different theme in each of its limited run of issues, this cross-disciplinary and always thought provoking publication defies easy categorization.)

Omar Pavanello (photographed 5 November 2020)

 

Handbags from the new Autumn 2020 line (5 November 2020)

Shopping in Venice, Past and Present--and A Recommendation

The front window of Archivio Cameraphoto Epoche on Barbaria de le Tole

Shortly after we moved to Venice in 2010 I was walking with a visiting American friend over the Rialto Bridge when he asked me "So what are you supposed to buy in Venice? These silk ties, maybe?" he said, gesturing toward a display of them in a shop window.

We'd been talking of something else entirely, his question came out of the blue, but I knew what he meant. For I, too, when I first visited Europe as a teenager in 1982, had been told before leaving home that certain places were famous for the particular things they produced--eg, carved wood figures in Switzerland, lace in Venice, gold and leather in Florence--and I was, it seemed, almost duty-bound to purchase accordingly and return to the US with my loot.

In fact this compulsion was rather like the one that Venetian traders must have felt many centuries before our conversation, having been ordered by their rulers to return from their own voyages abroad with valuable objects--acquired by whatever means necessary--with which the city could be decorated for its greater glory. The basilica of San Marco, of course, became (and remains) Exhibit Number 1 of the loot thus acquired (or the acquisitions thus looted, as the case often was).

In spite of how much the city had changed between 1982 (when I first saw it) and 2011 (when this conversation took place), the things one was supposed to buy in Venice hadn't changed: lace and glass. But real Burano lace, as I told my friend, is produced by quite literally just a few remaining elderly women, as a long-time retailer of lace told me soon after I moved here, and is accordingly both scarce and expensive. While real Murano glass, though less costly than lace, isn't necessarily as ubiquitous as it first appears, as the cheap stuff is either made in the Far East or is such swift, shoddy work as to have little to do with the tradition it is supposed to evoke.

My friend wasn't a lace or glass kind of guy anyway, and so I concluded simply, "Don't worry about it. There's almost nothing you'll see here that you won't see any place else you go in Italy. Or Europe. And most of it isn't even made here."

This didn't stop him from asking me the same question again the next day.... After all, old habits die hard, and the late- and short-lived modern ideal of being a citizen of the world, seeking after some idealistic and unquantifiable sense of companionship with one's fellow humans, often seems to have been displaced by that of being a consumer of the world, avid for and defined by one's acquisitions, paid for in ready cash.

I feel the effects of this emphasis on consumption in myself, and not wanting to encourage it either in myself or others, I've rarely been inclined to write about things to buy in Venice. Besides, the great bulk of articles on Venice are ultimately trying to sell you something, so my contribution was hardly needed. 

On the other hand, Venice has long been famous as a marketplace--in fact, as the great marketplace of Europe at a time long before "international emporiums" (with their batik prints and scented candles) became a mainstay in 20th-century American malls.

In the opening chapter of his book Bound in Venice: The Serene Republic and the Dawn of the Book, Alessandro Marzo Magno points out that the shopping streets between Piazza San Marco and the Rialto Bridge have changed less than one might imagine over the last five centuries:

[In 1520 Venice was] a city that, relatively speaking, was much more important than Italy today. Although Italy is now the world’s sixth or seventh industrial power, half a millennium ago Venice had a place on the podium. In the Europe of that time there were only three cities that we might call big; three cities with a population of more than one hundred fifty thousand: Paris, Naples, and Venice.

So, then, what would we have been able to find in the stores—which often were also workshops and homes—on the sixteenth century Mercerie? Cloth, for one thing, or rather the splendid red fabrics for which Venice was famous, dyed according to secret recipes inherited from the Byzantines. Or gilded leather; embossed leather panels decorated with gold leaf, used to embellish the interior walls of palaces, crafted using techniques imported from Moorish Spain, which in turn had inherited them from the Arabs. Or weapons, lots and lots of weapons: hankered over and vied for by plutocrats and sovereigns from all over Europe[....] The names of a couple of nearby streets, Spadaria (from spada, or sword) and Frezzaria (from freccia, or arrow) still speak to us today of that ancient vocation. 

But what struck foreign visitors most were the books: the dozens and dozens of bookmaking workshops that were gathered here in a density unequaled anywhere else in Europe. Word has come down to us of authentic book-shopping tours, like the one described by the historian Marcantonio Sabellico [...]when two friends trying go from the Fontego dei Tedeschi at the foot of the Rialto bridge, [...] to Saint Mark’s Square, [are] unable to make it to their destination, overwhelmed by their curiosity to read the lists of books appended outside the shops.

But Venice's status as the great market place of Europe goes back even further. In Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color, Philip Ball notes that Venice was trading with the Arabic world as early as the 9th century, and quotes Martin da Canal from his 13th century Chronique de Vénetiens (1267-1275), in which he writes that "merchandise passes through this noble city as water flows through fountains." Ball, whose eye-opening book examines the history of color in art in its material rather than theoretical or aesthetic sense--that is, as being intimately connected to trade and mining and chemistry and what might be called the proto-chemistry of the alchemists--elaborates thus on the offerings of Venetian markets:

From the Aegean Islands came sugar and wine; from the Far East, spices, porcelain, and pearls. Northen Europe supplied minerals, metal, and woolen cloth, while Egypt and Asia Minor were sources of gems, dyes, perfumes, ceramics, pigments, alum, and rich textiles.

And he suggests that this access to color exercised a profound effect on the work of the Venetian painters such as Titian, who "used an unusually large range of pigments, including orpiment and the only true orange of the Renaissance, realgar, available in Venice from around 1490."

Philip Ball writes that Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne "is a chart of nearly every known pigment at the time [of its painting]"--a benefit of having a wealthy patron who could afford (and demanded) the rarest pigments and of living in the great port city of Venice, unparalleled in Europe at the time for the array of exotic materials passing through it

Indeed, Venice, which Ball calls the "City of Color," was the major supply post for painters of the day with funds to spend on the best of materials. At a time when the contracts between patrons and painters went into great detail about both the type and quality of pigments to be used and the money allotted for their purchase he writes that:

The reputation of Venice as the best source of fine pigments is evident in the travel concession in Filippino Lippi's contract for the Strozzi Chapel; [and] Cosimo Tura came to Venice from Ferrara in 1469 to procure materials for his work on the Belriguardo Chapel.

So, in truth, Venice has always been about shopping, in some senses. The challenge these days of mass tourism and online sales is to locate something which truly is unique to this place. But it's not impossible, and for those who are interested in supporting the Venetian economy I'll put up some blog posts over the coming days (or weeks?) of places where I've purchased things myself.

Far from being definitive, this is nothing other than idiosyncratic, and I have no arrangement whereby I benefit from your patronage of any of these places. Nor have I arranged for you to receive a discount at any of them with the mention of my blog. I'll only briefly tell you what I've found and why each place has interested me, and leave the rest to you, to be taken up or not.

Which is a very long way of getting to a photography studio and archive, any one of whose photographic images is worth, as the old saying goes, much more than the thousand words written above.

Vittorio Pavan in Archivio Cameraphoto Epoche

The name of the place is the Archivio Cameraphoto Epoche, and it's located a short distance from the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo on Barbaria de le Tole (simply set off in the opposite direction from that which Verocchio's famous horse and rider face and in a few minutes you'll see the shop on your left, with its display window adorned by large black-and-white prints).

Its owner is Vittorio Pavan, who in addition to acting as the caretaker of more than 50 years of 20th-century Venetian history is also, as a publisher of fine arts books recently told me, the best printer of black-and-white photographic prints in the area.

His skill in this is amply evident in the fine art prints you'll find in his shop--and how nice it is to see fine art prints created in a dark room instead of by an inkjet printer! Though it's easy enough to get so swept away in the figures and scenes themselves as to lose sight of their developer's expertise.

For there's Igor Stravinsky reclining not-quite-comfortably in a gondola, or more at home conducting a rehearsal for the world premiere of his opera The Rake's Progress in La Fenice. There's a famous image of the young Sophia Loren and her impossibly tiny waistline on a balcony overlooking the Grand Canal. There's Picasso, Paul Newman, Orson Welles, Jean Cocteau, Antonioni and Monica Vitti, Hemingway, Richard Wright (dapper in a white dinner jacket outside Hotel Excelsior), Pasolini, Bardot, Denueve, Sutherland and Christie, Mick and Bianca, Keith and Anita, and nearly any other bold name cultural figure from the second half of the 20th century at work or at play, busy promoting or protesting, in the distinctive settings of Venice.

But no less worthy of attention--some would say more--are the images of Venetian life starting from 1946: fishermen and hunters, boat builders and lace makers, families and clerics, natural and industrial calamities, feste and special events, and even images labeled "Cronaca Nera": crime scene photos, including some graphic ones of, for example, the murder of Count Filippo Giordano delle Lanze in the reputedly cursed Grand Canal palace Ca' Dario, which you'll certainly not find in the real estate brochures offering the newly-created condominium units there for sale. 

All of the scores of images you'll see on display or stacked in archival photo boxes in the studio make up just a tiny fraction of the 320,000 negatives from the Venice-based photo agency, founded in 1946, which in its last and longest incarnation went by the name of Cameraphoto, and whose photographers supplied images to major newspapers and magazines around the world. 

Vittorio Pavan started working for the photo agency in 1972 at the age of 14, and it is now Pavan who struggles with the challenge of digitally preserving what he can of an archive which is inevitably disintegrating. 

The best (and quite beautifully-produced) account of the Cameraphoto Archive and Vittorio Pavan can be found in a 4 1/2 minute documentary (with English subtitles), used as part of a crowdfunding campaign early this year (which, alas, did not meet its goal) that you can watch below:

And for an online sample of the images available visit Cameraphoto's website: http://archiviocameraphotoepoche.com/index.php?lang=en

The website offers Archival Digital Fine-Art prints in various sizes and at various prices, but, in fact, you can no longer order through the website itself. 

Any online questions about images, or orders, should be emailed to info@bianconero-venezia.it.

Fine art dark room prints are also available.

Cameraphoto can ship anywhere in the world, and for someone looking for a distinctively Venetian object, one made only here and at a certain moment--literally instant--in time, it is an invaluable resource. 

And if you're able to visit the studio itself the next time you're in Venice, and peruse the images in person, it's time well spent in a historical and cultural venture well worth supporting.

2,967℉ in the Shade

And you think it's hot where you are this summer!

The artisan in the image above is one of Maestro Giorgio Giuman's three sons at Fornace Linea Arianna on Murano, and his work station is just a short distance from the factory's main glass oven, which burns at a temperature of 1,147℃ (or 2,967℉). To keep hydrated in such conditions he and his brothers each drink 6 liters of water (just over 1.5 gallons) per workday.

A slightly different version of this image was originally posted in late July of 2013, in connection with a post on the artist Judy Harvest's collaboration with Fornace Linea Arianna on her work Denatured.

The Best Photography Shop in Venice UPDATED

The new address of Pro Photo Italia is San Marco 4367, on Calle dei Fuseri. It's a short distance from Piazza San Marco, but the straightest and simplest route to it for those unfamiliar with the city is from Campo San Luca.

Though my high opinion of Pro Photo Italia and its proprietor Marco Missiaja hasn't changed in the four years since I first wrote of them on this blog, a number of other things about the store have--not least of all, its location.

Originally divided between two small storefronts near either end of Calle dei Fuseri, the store has recently fused into a single larger shop located on the same calle about midway between the old split locations.

The new shop not only has more space to display photographic equipment and photos, but in which to hold photography workshops.

To see images of the new location, and to read my (updated) post about what keeps me coming back to the shop, click on this link: http://veneziablog.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-best-photography-shop-in-venice.html

To check out the Pro Photo Italia website and online store (and to find out the address of its second brick-and-mortar store in Rome--which is run by Marco's brother), click here: https://prophotoitalia.webnode.it/

The Best Place to Buy a Wearable Piece of Venice

The Barena shop on Calle Minelli, between Campo Manin and Campo San Luca

A few years ago while I was walking through the Mercerie (those crowded alleys of shops running between Piazza San Marco and the Rialto Bridge) with a visiting friend he asked me, "What are you supposed to buy in Venice? Silk neck ties? Leather belts? Leather bags?" He pointed to those things in the shop windows around us.

His question threw me back to when I was a teenager, visiting Europe for the first time and diligently buying things I'd been told before leaving the States were the specialty of each locale: a gold cameo for my grandmother on Ponte Vecchio, a leather chessboard for my brother nearby; a small hand-carved alpine hiker in Brienz, Switzerland for my sister; lace for my mother in Venice.... In an era of globalization and the homogenization of so much of Europe, it was charming to be reminded of a time when I believed wholeheartedly in regional specialities--long before I moved to Venice and discovered, for example, that most lace sold in Venice is made a great distance from the lagoon (China).

I told my friend that what Venice was famous for was lace and blown glass, though much, if not most, of what we were seeing in the windows around us wasn't made here.

He had no interest lace or glass. He changed the subject.

The next day, on another walk, he asked me the same question, as though I were keeping something from him. Or perhaps simply because he really wanted a reason to buy a silk tie (which I assured him was exactly the same tie he'd find for sale in tourist shops in Florence or Rome or anywhere else) or a leather bag (ditto).

The interior of the Barena shop

Of course there are still shops here that do sell authentic Venetian lace (rule of thumb: if it ain't expensive, it ain't real Venetian lace) and authentic Venetian glass, as well as other authentic goods created by local artisans. But in this post I wanted to tell you about a shop that sells authentic Venetian clothes inspired by the styles and fabrics of traditional lagoon clothing, which are made on the mainland just a short distance from the lagoon in Mirano, and available in only a limited number of locations outside of Venice.

The name of the shop, located in a short alley that runs alongside the large modern Intesa San Polo bank between Campo Manin and Campo San Luca, is Barena, which is also the name of the clothing line it features.

"Barena" is the Venetian word for mud flat--of the sort that used to occupy a large part of the lagoon, and which are still vital to the ecological health of it--and aptly suggests the clothing line's roots in this unique environment.

The company (as you can read on the "Brand" link of the website above) was started in 1961 by Sandro Zara, and Mr Zara still heads it, along with his long-time collaborator Massimo Pigozzo and his daughter, Francesca Zara. 

There are just two Barena stores: the one in Venice, and another in the town of Mirano where the clothes are made; and one showroom each in New York, London, Milan, and Erenbach, Switzerland. Barneys Department store in New York City also carries the menswear line, for example, but at considerably higher prices than you'll find in Venice.

In other words, while Venice's exclusive shopping street of Calle Larga Marzo XXII is lined with big-name designer boutiques selling exactly what you can buy in any one of their countless boutiques around the world, the best place to buy Barena is here in Venice.

The owner of the Barena shop, Nicola Grillo

The Barena shop here is owned by Nicola Grillo, whose knowledge of both the history of Venetian clothing and the manufacture of its typical fabrics I think must rival that of Signor Zara himself, who's considered an authority on these subjects. In the course of our recent conversation Grillo told me that the production of high quality wool cloth, of the sort we were looking at in the Barena line, has a very long tradition in Venice. The first regulations governing its manufacture here were issued in 1253, and the zone of its production used to stretch from San Giacomo dall'Orio to what is now Piazzale Roma.

He showed me promotional material for the very first Barena menswear collection from the late 1980s (the womens' line was begun only a few years ago), pointing out the features of each item--its cut, its fabric, etc--which revealed its original use by the lagoon's hunters or fisherman or marinai (something usually represented by Barena's name for the item as well).

In addition to the Barena line, Sandro Zara's company now also includes the line of Tabarrificio (which produces the traditional cloaks whose revival Zara is credited with beginning) and Cini, an old Venetian lanificio, or wool producer, started in the late 1700s, whose extensive archive of historical fabrics and production "recipes" Zara also acquired with his recent purchase of the company from the family's last surviving heir. Grillo's Barena store carries all of these lines and a few select others whose materials and style is in keeping with Barena's.

But Grillo also offers items produced by Barena specifically for his store alone. He showed me, for example, a jacket made from a particular shetland tweed he'd discovered. He'd found a 10 meter bolt of the cloth, from which five jackets were made only for his store. 

The Barena, Tabarrificio and Cini lines are not inexpensive, but in contrast to some clothing that costs even more, the pieces are made to wear well and long. Not surprisingly in a company so inspired by a love of durable high-quality cloth, and by extensive research into clothing worn by working Venetians (rather than the much better-documented styles of the nobility), the seams of these clothes (in my experience of them) don't unravel, buttons don't fall off, the wool doesn't "pill" or lose its shape. For all of their evocations of another time and all the historical study that inspired them, the clothes aren't simply "show pieces" or costumes, and they hold up well over long use--as they're intended to do.

There's a great deal of the lagoon and its history represented in Nicola Grillo's little Barena shop. And for anyone looking for something distinctly of this area I'd recommend they pay it a visit.  

A sample of some of this season's wool vests

A New Marco Polo Bookshop for Kids Launches This Friday

The pleasant sight of a room full of readers in the yet-unfinished space of Marco Polo Kids during last Saturday's Open Day

In the nearly 6 years I've been writing this blog I feel lucky to have never had to worry about advertising or conflicts of interests. I've never taken ads or "monetized" the blog, nor had lodgings or guided tours or anything else to sell. There's nothing wrong with doing any of these things--and maybe I should have been doing some of them for all I know. But it seemed pleasant to do something in which financial considerations were not woven into the fabric of the project, as they are, unavoidably, in so many things we do these days.

If I recommended a store, for example, it was because I'd had good experiences in it or found its merchandise especially interesting before I ever thought of doing a blog post about it or came to know its proprietor.  

This was the case with Libreria Marco Polo, the local bookstore about which I find (after using the "Search This Blog" widget in the right hand margin of this page) that I've done five different posts: the first of them on 4 December 2011, the most recent on 27 September 2015.

The last of these posts was about the grand opening of a second Libreria Marco Polo in Campo Santa Margherita, a beautiful bookstore which seems to be thriving in its new location.

A busy bookmark workshop outside Marco Polo Kids during last Saturday's Open House

Today's post is about the transformation and grand reopening of the original Libreria Marco Polo-- located just behind Mauro Codussi's lovely little ruddy church of San Giovanni Grisostomo, not far from the Rialto--as a children's bookstore: Libreria Marco Polo Kids.

Considering how much I've enjoyed both Marco Polo bookstores over the years, and considering how important they've been as a site of community activity and spirit, I'd almost certainly be posting about this news in any case. But this time it's a little different, as my wife Jen is--along with Elisabetta Favaretti, the long-time co-proprietor of the Marco Polo bookstores, and four other women--one of the founding booksellers involved in the creation of this new store.

A reading during last Saturday's Open House

Marco Polo Kids will stock books for children and adolescents and, along with its Italian books, include a selection of titles in English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, and Arabic. But in addition to its books, the store will also offer a range of activities for kids: readings, workshops, courses and special events. It aims to be a cultural center for both local kids and their parents and for visitors alike.

A young visitor helps decorate the bookshop entrance

Last Saturday's "Open Day" at Marco Polo Kids was the first chance for people to get a look at the
changes taking place in the new store and, in some cases (as at right), to quite literally leave their imprint on the space. With the store still in an unfinished state, its bookshelves not yet filled, it was a chance for people to meet the booksellers, sample some of the activities the bookstore will offer (last Saturday: a bookmark-making workshop outside, readings indoors), enjoy snacks and beverages, and offer their input on the kind of cultural and educational place they'd like it to be. There was nothing yet for sale--in spite of how many people saw things they wanted to buy. It was all about the free exchange of ideas and building a sense of community.

The official Inauguration of the store will take place this Friday, 28 October, beginning at 5 pm, with home-made cakes and beverages for kids. At 6 pm live music will be added to the mix of activities, and apertifs will be available for adults. And this Friday, in contrast to last Saturday's Open Day, the store will officially be open for business.

As important as the idea of local community building is to the bookshop is the idea that visitors to the city and their children will also be welcome to participate in a space where real Venetian life--not simulated or costumed or commodified versions of it--is taking place. A Venice of the present and the future, not just of the past; a present and future that visitors themselves can participate in.

If you're in town this Friday, stop in for the Inauguration, or, at any time thereafter, to see what you think. 

Two kids read while another draws on the bookshop's chalkboard wall

A Second Libreria Marco Polo Sets Sail in Campo Santa Margherita

A view of the store, with the Scuola Grande dei Carmini at right

After 13 years of doing business just behind the pretty little church of San Giovanni Grisostomo, a short distance from the Rialto Bridge, Libreria Marco Polo inaugurated a second store last night, just opposite the Scuola Grande dei Carmini, and the turnout of supporters (as you can see in the images above and below) was impressive.

While the store behind San Giovanni has a large selection of used books in English, the new store looks to focus more on new books in Italian, including a good selection of children's books. The new space is beautiful, with mullioned windows, brick walls, a beam ceiling, and a raised floor that will keep the shelves well above the aqua alta that sometimes enters into the other location and necessitates the use of a pump.

Formerly an antique shop, and before that, a small neighborhood grocery, the space was in such good shape, according to Claudio Moretti, its proprietor, that he was able to sign a lease on the space on 4 September and have it ready to open last night, the 26th.

With its series of author appearances and discussions, various courses, and community-oriented events, Libreria Marco Polo plays an important role in the cultural, grassroots life of Venice and, as the turnout last night indicated, residents are enthused about the possibility of that role expanding. For anyone interested in a glimpse into local life, beyond the tourist trade--and in concretely supporting that life--either of the two stores is a good place to start.

For information on the two stores and upcoming events, visit their website: http://www.libreriamarcopolo.com or Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/libreria.marcopolo.bookstore?fref=ts.

For a previous post on the original Libreria Marco Polo and its importance in the community, as well as a number of photos of its interior, see: http://veneziablog.blogspot.it/2013/11/evviva-libreria-marco-polo.html

One of the store's three rooms

The crowd overflowed onto either side of the corner store

Dining Al Fresco: Five More Views of Trattoria alle Vignole

One of the tables overlooking the lagoon

We somehow ended up at Trattoria alle Vignole again last night, the second time in the last three nights, and the subject of my previous post (which supplies links to more information on the restaurant: http://veneziablog.blogspot.it/2015/05/rattoria-alle-vignole.html). It was quiet on our Thursday night visit; it was quite lively last night, a Saturday night.

In one area of the large graveled outdoor dining area, near the little swing set, was a bachelor party: the groom dressed in a curly red clown wig, a white T-shirt (whose hand-written text I never got around to reading), and very small women's panties worn over his jeans. As bachelor parties go, it was quite well behaved. After one member of the party got a bit carried away and, for whatever reason, removed his trousers, he noticed Jen walking past on her way to the restroom, apologized for his rash act, and put them back on.

Before sunset the whole group of a dozen or so men piled into a large boat and set off from the trattoria's dock to wherever their next revels lay.

There was live entertainment: a singer accompanied by a Karaoke set-up. He sang, with not a trace of irony, "Feelings." Yes, that "Feelings" ("Whoa, whoa, whoa..."), which Wikipedia assures me won the 1975 Grammy Award for Song of the Year.

There were groups of teenagers arriving in their boats, and families arriving in theirs, and a birthday party of adults, and plenty of smaller kids, on the swing set, or running around the large grassy yard behind the kitchen, beside the very large garden.

The Rombo al forno was okay last night, but not as good as I remembered it being last year (perhaps because it was not cooked with potatoes, as it was last time I had it). The spaghetti alle vongole was good, the pizzas good. But the light and view and general feel were great.

When we left at 10 pm everything was still going strong--the music, the families and teens and groups of friends (all speaking Italian)--and for the first time in many many years I found myself reminded of the large Italian(-American) weddings that punctuated my childhood far less often than I wished, back about the time when the song "Feelings" was being played on radio stations all over America, without a trace of irony.

The view of the trattoria's landing dock; the church of San Pietro di Castello and the campanile of San Giorgio Maggiore in the distance

People arrive at the trattoria in boats of all sizes: in this case an inflatable two-person dinghy

A couple walks toward the path leading to the vaporetto stop leading to (and from) Fondamenta Nove

Sunset seen from the trattoria

Dining Al Fresco in the Lagoon: Trattoria alle Vignole

A view of the trattoria from the lagoon: approaching in a boat from the direction of the Arsenale

As we rarely go out to eat here, I'm generally uncomfortable whenever anyone visiting asks me for a restaurant recommendation, as we simply haven't sampled a wide enough range of them to give anything more than basic suggestions. And yet, that said, I'm nevertheless compelled to tell you about Trattoria alle Vignole, which we visited for the first time this season yesterday evening.

Actually, it's not the first time I've been tempted to do a post on it, but--dare I admit this?--there are some few things around Venice I keep to myself, awful as that may sound, and Trattoria alle Vignole was one of them. Located well outside the historic center on an island, reachable only by one's own boat or a vaporetto (or, I suppose, a water taxi, for those with deep pockets), the thought that I might somehow (however slight the odds) be responsible for the arrival of the first mass group of 100 day-tripping tourists at the trattoria disgorged from a lancione (or tour boat) was too awful a prospect to risk. 

In lieu of a parking lot. During the summer mooring places can become a bit scarce

For the only boats that pull up to the trattoria now are owned by individuals or families, and it is one of the many pleasures of being seated at one of the trattoria's many outdoor tables on a warm afternoon or evening to see them arrive and tie up along the riva. (Sometimes, it must be said, only briefly: as when customers arrive to pick up wood-oven pizzas for "take-away", then depart again in their boats--just as I'm used to seeing them do in America in their cars.)

In case you're wondering if the artichokes in the risotto are fresh: they're grown within 100 yards of the kitchen

Along with the wood-oven pizzas, there is an extensive array of cicchetti: things like grilled vegetables, grilled cuttlefish and baby octupi, very good sarde in saor (Istanbul-influenced, according to a native friend, because of its sultane, or raisins) and scampi in saor. Or you can order from a very limited daily menu of dishes written on the chalkboard outside the bar. Last night, as is often the case, our three choices included a scampi risotto with zucchini flowers and a Rombo (turbot) al forno, both of which are excellent.

If you can't come in a private boat you can take the number 13 vaporetto line from Fondamenta Nove to Vignole. I've never done this, so I refer you for details to here (the trattoria's Facebook page): https://it-it.facebook.com/pages/Trattoria-alle-Vignole/204717142917485

or here (a website for the island of Vignole): http://www.isoladellevignole.it/trattoria-alle-vignole.html

I do know there is a bit of a walk from the vaporetto stop where you arrive to the trattoria itself--perhaps the equivalent of one or two New York City blocks, I suspect, though, again, I haven't actually done it myself. For those used to walking around the historic center, it will be a pleasant tranquil pastoral change. But as the part of the path I've seen is not paved and the outside table area of the trattoria itself is covered in clean gravel, it may, unfortunately, present some difficulties for anyone in a wheelchair. I would suggest checking with the trattoria first in such a case to make sure of access. 

Last night the sunset was obscured by clouds, so I'm afraid none of the images of this post suggest anything like the full charm of the place. Maybe I'll have something better to show you in the future.

I wouldn't call it "economical"--the cicchetti, in particular, can add up. It seems about average for Venetian restaurants. But the food is fresh, and (as long as you stay out of the patio area with the flat-screen tv playing music videos--or ask them to simply turn the damn thing off) on summer evenings it's one of my favorite places in the lagoon to be.

But let's just keep this between us, shall we?

[For a few more images of the trattoria, see: http://veneziablog.blogspot.it/2015/05/dining-al-fresco-another-evening-at.html]

At the end of the unpaved path leading from the vaporetto stop is this view of San Piero di Castello and, even better, the trattoria a little further along

A New Source of Magic in Venice

One of Mistero e Magia's two proprietors, Alberto De Curti, performs a trick for a young visitor from France

Venice has long been considered a mysterious and magical place, but only since the March 28 opening of Mistero e Magia has it had its own magic store: the first ever in the city's history. 

Located on Ruga Giuffa, the narrow picturesque commercial calle that branches off of Campo Santa Maria Formosa in the direction of Campo San Zaccaria, the store not only stocks everything a budding magician might need, but if you're looking for juggling supplies of all kinds, face paints and clown gear, or a wide range of wands with which to produce soap bubbles in sizes ranging from the divertingly domestic to the elephantine, you need look no further.

What especially sets it off, though, is its staff. Mistero e Magia is not just a place where magic supplies are sold, but where magic is actually performed--and taught. Sandro and I happened upon the store by accident a couple of Saturdays ago and he was thrilled when one of the staff started showing him some tricks.

I know absolutely nothing about magic and, aside from a couple of brief performances at birthday parties he'd attended, Sandro had not seen much of it. But the staff, both the first day we wandered in and on subsequent visits, is great with kids (and adults): patient and informative, intent on educating, rather than merely selling.

The store has become Sandro's favorite after-school destination. The last time we were in, I talked to one of the store's proprietors, Alberto De Curti (Daniele Malusa is the other), and watched as he demonstrated various tricks to various kids: first, in Italian, then in English, then in French. De Curti told me that beyond the impromptu education they're happy to do in the course of normal business hours, the store also offers workshops for both kids and adults taught by professional magicians, suitable for both full-time residents of Venice and those who are only in town for a few days. 

For example, Aroldo Lattarulo will teach a course on April 26, and later in the spring the well-known American illusionist Vito Lupo will offer his own workshop. To learn more about the store and its offerings, you can visit their Facebook page: Mistero e Magia Facebook Page. 

Residents of Venice are all-too-familiar with the sight of neighborhood stores going out of business. It's much rarer to see a store that opens with the aim of becoming a destination for the city's young (the last time we were in Mistero e Magia there was a group of local guys in their later teens who'd come in to talk magic with one of the store's staff).

Mistero e Magia also happens to be a great destination for tourists and visitors to the city: an excellent break, for example, from the usual sight-seeing for a visiting kid (or adult) worn out and foot-sore from too much legendary old art and architecture.

It's the kind of magical enterprise the city could use more of, and it will likely require the patronage of both residents and visitors to stay afloat. It's worth a visit--or many.

A Violin Maker and Restorer in Dorsoduro

"When did you start learning how to work with wood?" I ask Francesco Trevisin as we stand in his small workshop on the ground floor of his 16th-century house just behind the Guggenheim Museum in the Dorsoduro sestiere of Venice. He points to his two-year-old son Arturo, seated on the ground between us, pounding with a large wood mallet (but no nails) on a block of wood, and says, "When I was his size. I started out just playing in my grandfather's workshop, where the tools were my toys, as they are for Arturo. My grandfather was a carpenter in the Arsenale. He worked on boats belonging to the Navy. And his brother, my great-uncle, had a business renting boats near [the church of the] Carmini. My grandfather would repair those, too. Wood boats, boats to be rowed."

I'm puzzled by the idea of someone renting out boats not far from the historic center of Venice. Overly-influenced by today's Venice, I assume the business must have been oriented toward tourists, but can't imagine either the little rowboats available for rent in someplace like Rome's Villa Boghese in Venice, nor tourists capable of rowing in the Venetian style. "This was a business for tourists?" I ask.

"No," Francesco replies, "for Venetians. My great-uncle rented traditional Venetian boats, sanpierote, tope... Through the 1970s there were not all the motorboats there are now in the city, and fiberglass boats had not yet taken over, as they have now. If a Venetian needed to transport something like a piece of furniture, for example, they would still do so by rowing. These were my great uncle's customers."

Francesco in his workshop (updated 28 November 2014)

It's hard for me to believe that traditional oar-powered Venetian boats had played such a role in the city during my own lifetime, but if I'm going to manage it anywhere Francesco's workshop, where he repairs and restores violins and cellos and other wood instruments, is one of the best places to do so in Venice. Outside the walls of this little room filled with tools and pigments and instruments and craftsmanship redolent of another era, Rio Terà San Vio is so completely quiet at noon on this weekday, without even a stray sound of a vaporetto or water taxi, that it's easy to imagine that one still lives in a time when Venetians get around by oar and that it's the norm, rather than something quite old-fashioned, that the son of violin maker would naturally become a violin maker himself.

But the fact is that Francesco's own path to becoming a violin maker, in spite of his grandfather's influence, was not direct. He studied physics at Ca' Foscari, then, after a mandatory year of military service, worked in the carpentry department of Teatro La Fenice until he was 30, when he gained admittance to the International School of Violin Making in Cremona.

"What made you want to learn to make violins?" I ask him. "Do you play?"

"No, I play the flute," Francesco says. "But I loved music, I had worked with wood my whole life, the school is excellent, and is nearby..."

"So if Cremona was the birthplace of the guitar, let's say, with a long tradition and an excellent school, do you think you would have learned to make them instead?" I ask.

"No, no," Francesco immediately replies. "For me the violin has a special allure."

At the time Francesco attended the school there was a three-year and a five-year program; because of his extensive prior experience with wood, he enrolled in the shorter program. (An interesting recent article on the school in Cremona can be found here: http://www.italymagazine.com/featured-story/violin-makers-cremona). Having completed it, he chose to spend his mandatory one-year training period not in Cremona, where the emphasis would have been on making new instruments, but in Germany, in Oldenburg (near Bremen), where he could take the first step toward becoming a restorer. He enjoyed his time there, then spent short periods gaining more experience in England and Holland, before returning to work in Cremona for two years. He then took a job in Lugano, Switzerland for a year and half, before moving back to Venice and trying to open his own shop. In a city so completely given over to tourism, it wasn't an easy task, nor was he thrilled at how much time he had to devote to matters of business rather than craft, so when a friend told him of a position available at an important shop in New York City, David Segal Violins, near Lincoln Center, he applied for it (http://www.davidsegalviolins.com/). 

"Was it the job or the chance to live in the city of New York that appealed to you more?" I ask him.

"The job," Francesco says. "It's an excellent shop, one of the best in the world. It turned out that I liked New York very much, but if the shop had been somewhere else, I would have gone there."

He spent his hours in the shop restoring and maintaining and repairing some truly great instruments. It was there, in New York City, that he had the chance to actually work on--and not just study--instruments made by the legendary luthiers of Cremona, such as Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù and Antonio Stadavari. In his spare time, after shop hours, he made violins of his own.

Internal view of the f-hole of a mid-19th-century double bass

"For anyone who wants to make violins, it's very important to have the experience of actually handling and working with a Stradavarius or a Testore, to see first-hand how they were made," Francesco tells me. To see and hear one of the violins that Francesco himself made during his New York years, you can watch a young up-and-coming violinist, Margarita Krein, performing the Red Violin Caprices by John Corigliano with it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi_i-8vT2Fo.

It was Krein herself who would relay to Francesco one of the most flattering estimates of his violins he's ever received: she was in a recording studio in New York recording some pieces when the sound engineer in charge asked her, after a few trial runs, for information about the Stradavarius she was playing.

Francesco's skill as both a restorer and a maker of instruments in New York led to a job offer from Robertson and Sons Violin Shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, another of America's best known shops (http://www.robertsonviolins.com/), but a relationship and subsequent marriage brought him back to Venice, where he now devotes himself to restoration and repairs.

He shows me a mid-19th century double bass he's currently working on. "A local baroque musician found this in a flea market," he tells me. "The sides are quite damaged, with cracks and holes--you see I must fill in places with small pieces of wood as if I'm doing a mosaic. But it is a Viennese instrument, it's top is still in good shape, and it is not easy to find an instrument like this with wood that has been seasoned for 100 or 200 years. Or, rather, you can, but it will be extremely expensive. So we take our chances with this one. The job will take me six months, but I think we will have a very beautiful sounding instrument when everything is done. It will have the kind of sound that is perfect for baroque music, instead of the kind of tones you get from new instruments."    

In his spare time now, Francesco plays flute in a nearby amateur wind orchestra--the Gruppo Musicale Città di Molignano--and, like many Venetians, runs a B&B out of his house. Named Dorsoduro 461, after its address, it offers three double rooms in the apartment two floors above his ground floor workshop, and a bright book-filled lounge/breakfast room looking over the beautiful and tranquil Rio Terà San Vio (http://www.dorsoduro461.com/). "They are not extravagant lodgings," Francesco says, "but they are very fairly priced, I think, and comfortable, and the location can't be beat--close to everything, and very Venetian, but also very peaceful."

His ideal now, he tells me, is to integrate his work on instruments with the B&B: "I'm lucky to have had very interesting guests from all over. But when musicians come to stay, that is even more special. If a musician has an instrument to repair, or is interested in having a violin made, then the shop and B&B merge perfectly. Or if a musician comes to Venice and would like to play here, it would be fun to arrange for a performance with other musicians, in a hall. Or also as a flash mob. I have been quite taken with what musicians have done with flash mobs. You know flash mobs?"

I admit I really know only the term, so he leads me to a computer in his apartment upstairs and shows me the following video of an extraordinarily well-choreographed and striking flash mob performance by the Vienna Philharmonic in the Vienna Westbahnhof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXglXeONApw.

"Now, that is really exceptional," he says, " I don't imagine anything so grand in Venice. But I love the idea of musicians coming together to make this dramatic fleeting thing of such great beauty. What a great thing it would be for the city--so different from all the regulations and tourism and money-making--and what a great experience for the musicians who participate and the bystanders who see and hear it."

It is now time for Arturo's lunch. Arturo has kept a small hammer with him from the workshop. I think of the line of wood working descending from Francesco's grandfather, to Francesco, and possibly to Arturo, and it suddenly occurs to me to ask, "But what about your own father, Francesco, he didn't work with wood?" 

"No," Francesco says, "he sold fabrics." Which, of course, is another craft and trade at which Venetians have long excelled.

"Do you hope that Arturo will follow in your footsteps?" I finally ask. "Become an instrument maker, too?"

"I would like him to be able to do what really interests him," Francesco replies. "If that is working with wood, then, yes, I would be happy. I became accustomed to the smell of wood and the tools very very early in my life. I think that can be very beautiful, to start very young with very good memories of being with your grandfather, or father, in a good safe place, having fun, playing, not working. The memories stay with you always, when you are older, they inform your work, they remain. But if that is how he will feel about things--that is up to him. I don't worry about such things. The important thing now is to have fun."

The entryway of Dorsoduro461 B&B, with a reflection of Francesco's workshop

The Best Photography Shop in Venice (Updated 8 June 2018)

Marco Missiaja's Pro Photo Italia shop on Calle dei Fuseri (address: San Marco 4367) (all images updated 8 June 2018)

I don't know exactly how many photography shops there are in Venice, but I have no doubt about which of them is my favorite. I first happened into Marco Missiaja's Pro Photo Italia (in its old location) on Calle dei Fuseri in need of a tripod. I later returned for a number of other little things--rechargeable batteries on one day, a memory card on another--and always enjoyed talking to him. A photographer himself, he turned out to be a great source of information (in Italian and English) not only on the subject of gear, but on the practice of taking pictures.

I also appreciated the fact that I could ask him about different lenses I was considering for my camera without ever feeling that his answers were dictated simply by his interest in making a sale. He didn't suggest equipment based upon its cost, nor his profit margin. On the contrary, I've known him to tell me flat out that something I was thinking of buying was not something I actually needed.  

I learned about the Fuji cameras I now use (initially, the Fuji X-E1, now the Fuji X-T1) from him as a result of asking about some of his own framed night shots of Venice for sale in his store. When my old Canon gave out not long after, he allowed me to try out his own X-E1 after I expressed interest in it. Though he remains a fan of Fuji, he recently (as of June 2018) started to shoot much of his own work with a Sony camera. So you can find both Sony and Fuji gear in his shop (along with Canon, Nikon, and other brands) and talk about them with someone who's used both extensively for his own work.

Marco and his partner, Grazia, behind the counter on Calle dei Fuseri 

When I originally posted this in February 2014, Pro Photo Italia actually consisted of two small shops near either end of the Calle dei Fuseri. A short time ago the contents of those two separate storefronts were combined in a single more spacious shop on the same calle, about midway between where the two small shops used to be and a few yards from the Ponte dei Fuseri.

The greater amount of space in the new location allows not only for the better display of photography supplies, equipment, and framed images, but for workshops and events to be held in-store: either in a light-filled ground floor room or a well-equipped photography studio upstairs (see images below).

I've found Marco's prices to be the best not only in Venice proper, but usually as good as any I've seen on the mainland or online. But you can check this out for yourself by visiting his website and online store at: http://www.prophotoitalia.com/

There's also a second Pro Photo Italia in Rome, run by Marco's brother, which I haven't visited yet, but which I look forward to checking out (its address can be found on the website link above). 

But when you're in Venice and in need of photography supplies (however small) or gear (however sophisticated) Pro Photo Italia is the place to go.

The new shop has space on the ground floor in which to hold workshops and events...

...as well as a studio upstairs for workshops focusing on matters of lighting and studio photography