AUNTIE PASTA: The Big Vay Kay Starts Now

Thursday, August 13, 2015

I think the vendors at the daily market here in Chiavari take vacations, but I don’t know when. They seem to always be on the job. 

As for me, I'm taking a little time off starting today.

Hope you all have a great rest of the summer, see you in September. 

 Daily Fruit and Vegetable Market in Chiavari, Italy

LIFE: The Porticos of Chiavari

CHIAVARI, Italy – It’s not hard to imagine what life was like in Chiavari during the Middle Ages, any early morning stroll through the old portico covered streets of this small town on the Italian Riviera will take you back thousands of years, and do it faster than a time machine.

 

Chiavari, Italy

What I like the most about Chiavari are the porticoed streets of the historic center. They are called “carruggi” in Genovese dialect, and while many of them look like movie sets, they unify the center of town better than any other architectural detail ever could.

 The porticoes were the idea of the Genovese, who took control of the town in 1167. The Genovese were merchants and traders and realized that Chiavari, which was located at the crossroads of the Roman Via Aurelia and the roads for Emilia and Lombardy, was in a strategic commercial position.

 

Friends Meet and Greet Under the Porticoes

And precisely because of its position, the town was often under attack by other city states who also recognized the commercial possibilities, as well as by Barbary pirates who lurked in the watery coves waiting for an opportunity to haul away cargo and sell off the locals as slaves.

Within a year of taking control, the Genovese fortified the town by building a castle/fortress on the edge of town. Less than ten years later they drew up a plan for what was to be the new Chiavari, safe and secure, enclosed by a circle of walls complete with a moat and a drawbridge. To develop balance in the urban core of the town they created a commercial area of porticoed streets.

 

The Center is Closed to Traffic 

The most important porticoed street is via Martiri della Liberazione, known locally as the “carrugio lungo”, the long street. From its conception in the 1100’s, it was designed to be a commercial street occupied by artisans and merchants. On this street, more than in other parts of town, the columns and capitals that form the bases of the porticos are made from a variety of materials, including marble and granite.

Because of the differences in the materials, town historians think that the columns and capitals came from China, carried as ballast on Genovese cargo ships on their return trips. It’s entirely possible as the Chiavarsi, as well as the Genovese, had been actively doing business with, or living in China since the days of Marco Polo.

 

Not All the Porticoes Look the Same

There was a lot of money to be made in those early days, and if you were a merchant or trader in this town, chances are you were very rich. And if you also happened to have a Pope on one of the branches of your family tree, you were probably richer than most of your richer-than-all-get-out neighbors. In fact, you were probably richer than anyone in the entire territory.

That was the situation with the Ravaschieri family who were related to Pope Innocent IV.  Sometime after the year 1250, they built themselves a palazzo the likes of which Chiavari had never seen before.  The palazzo was – and is still – called the Palazzo dei Portici Neri, the Palazzo of the Black Porticoes and it is on Via Ravaschieri. Of course it is.

 

A Corner of the Palazzo dei Portici Neri

Not only are the porticoes on this Gothic building black – as they are made of slate -  but they are twice as wide and twice as tall as any porticoes in town. The building’s façade is made from alternating bands of marble and slate, giving it the characteristic black and white stripes that have set the palazzi of rich and royal Genovese apart from the run-of-the-mill palazzi owners for centuries.

But for all the grand buildings and soaring porticoes, I confess the parts of Chiavari I like the best are the back streets with the squatty old porticoes, the ones where the posts look a little bow-legged and a little tired. I like the posts that seem to have shaken off the layers of cement put on them over the years in an attempt to give the old bricks a make-over. I’m glad they resist.  They have been standing in place for almost a thousand years and no doubt they’ll be standing long after those who want to fancy them up are gone.

Not far from my apartment there is a building that dates back to 1493.  From what you can still see of it, it was a building of rare and haunting beauty. On its façade there is a slate carving of exquisite workmanship, and an inscription on a column that has been almost entirely worn away by time. There is also the bust of a man, clearly from the Renaissance, but nothing is known of him. Why he is there is a complete mystery, but he has left his mark.

Going Home

You can almost feel the spirits of the many Chiavarese who have passed this way as you walk along the oldest of the old streets, the ones with the short, squatty porticoes that pull you in and protect you. And I’m convinced that one of these days I’m going to turn a corner and actually run into Christopher Columbus. I"m convinced it will happen.   

LIFE: Maestro Franco Casoni, Master Woodcarver

CHIAVARI, Italy – It was the wooden rocking horse sitting out in front of a small shop on Via Bighetti in Chiavari that caught my eye. It was much like the one my father had made for my own children many years ago and I was curious to know where it had come from. The shop door was open so I looked in and saw a man standing at a workbench carving what looked to be the head of Queen Victoria.

 

The Shop on Via Bighetti, Chiavari

At his feet were the wood shavings he was carefully removing from the block of wood. When he realized someone – me – was at the door he looked up and gave me a big smile. “Come in, come in, welcome to my workshop,” he said. And that’s how I met Maestro Franco Casoni, Master Wood Carver.

Franco Casoni’s workshop is crowded from ceiling to floor with wood sculptures, some finished, some half finished. There is a little bit of everything including figureheads for sailing ships, flying angels, and ornate frames for important portraits. The eclectic collection tells the story of Chiavari and Liguria, of rich patrons who made their fortune importing and trading goods brought into the Genoa harbor from all over the world. 

Inside the Workshop

Maestro Casoni was born, raised and trained in the fine art of woodcarving in Chiavari. He started young, about 13, and after art school he served two long apprenticeships with Master woodcarvers before opening his own shop. He specialized in furniture making, notably the Chiavari chair and other important pieces. His restoration work of the wooden portions of the Oratory of San Filippo Neri in Genoa, as well as the group of statues of the Holy Trinity of Modica (RG), and the groups of angels found in the parishes of Zoagli and Sestri Levante, here in Liguria, are well known by art connoisseurs throughout Italy.

He also has a lot of awards under his belt. He has represented Italy at the European Parliament, has been a featured guest on many national Italian television programs, he has authored many books on the art of wood carving and a photo exhibit of his work is part of a permanent collection in a private gallery in the near-by town of Lavagna. He has taken part in so many important exhibits and won so many awards, that it began to overwhelm me. In other words, the friendly guy with the smiling face that I found myself talking to Friday afternoon is a living national treasure.

 

And From Inside the Wood the Face Appears

He’s a nice guy. He showed me a photo of his sons and his grandsons, the ones he built the rocking horse for and the little wooden scooter that was parked just inside the shop door. He showed me a photo of a house up in the hills above Chiavari that he bought and restored. “The stones on the outside of the house are red,” he said, “because there is a lot of magnesium in them.” 

There were quite a large number of ship’s figureheads, and the Maesto told me that he once carved one for the English sailing ship “Baboon”. There was one piece that fascinated me that was not a sculpture but a collection of old match box covers woven into a table covering that tells the story of the Unification of Italy. “It needs some work,” he said, but it looked fine to me. I have no idea how it ties in with woodcarving, but it doesn’t matter.

The Maestro Intagliatore - Wood Carver

One of the Maestro’s specialties are corzetti stamps. Corzetti (aka crosetti, croxetti and curzetti), are flat disks of pasta that are individually embossed using a wooden press. The Genovese have been making and eating corzetti pasta, which were designed to look like the old Genovese coin, the gold Genovino d’oro, since the days of the Renaissance. The noble families of the time would order their cooks to emboss the pasta disks with their coat of arm to remind dinner guests how important their family was and to reconfirm their dominance over the territory.  

He had just finished the one he proudly put before me to photograph, telling me it had been ordered by a Genovese Countess. Seems she’s having an important summer soiree soon and wants to mark the occasion with a special stamp on the corzetti pasta that is on the menu. And what could make a more noble impression for a 21^st century Countess than corzetti pressed in a hand made corzetti stamp from the hands of Maestro Franco Casoni.

 

Corzetti Stamps for the Contessa

We covered a lot of ground in the short time we talked. I started feeling a little guilty taking him away from his work, but if he was feeling pressed for time it didn’t show. Everything in the shop had a story, including the Maestro who is perhaps the most interesting story of all.

LIFE: This Clean Italian Life

CHIAVARI, ITALY – I have new neighbors in the apartment above me. I don't know them,   but I know they like to haul their rugs out on their terrace and beat them with a paddle. While this loosens the dust in the rugs, it also creates a dust cloud that, if the wind is blowing in just the right direction and at the right speed, then floats down and finds its way into my apartment.

Which bring me to today’s post. I wrote it a few years ago when I lived in Saronno, a suburb of Milan. It’s about dust but mostly it's about how neighbors can become part of your life even if you don’t know them.  

SARONNO, Italy - There’s something going on over at the Cleans. Something odd. It’s almost 8 AM and Mr. Clean has not come out on his balcony to start sweeping and cleaning. And he didn’t pull his blankets and pillows off his bed and carefully arrange them on the freshly cleaned balcony railing to air either. He didn’t even sweep the floor in his bedroom or make coffee.

Now l wouldn’t want you to think I’m some kind of stalker, spying on my neighbors, so let me explain: my morning routine usually starts with a cup of coffee out on my balcony. As I sit enjoying the morning and planning my day from my 5th floor vantage point, I can’t help but see the Clean’s apartment, which is on the first floor of the apartment building across the street. It’s like a theater performance. First the heavy taparelle that cover the balcony door of Mr. Clean’s bedroom slowly wind upward, like a stage curtain. Then Mr. Clean pops out and the cleaning starts. Except for today.

The Cleans have a set routine. The tapparelle in Mrs. Clean’s bedroom go up just about the time Mr. Clean is back in the kitchen making coffee after having cleaned the balcony and setting his bedding out to air. The first thing on Mrs. Clean’s mind is to strip her bed and drape her bed linens out on the sill of her bedroom window, which she has already wiped down. However their morning cleaning routine doesn’t begin in earnest until the bed linens have had enough air and are brought back into the apartment and the beds are made.

As soon as that is done Mrs. Clean shakes out the throw rugs and puts them out on the balcony to air, and then she starts to clean the bathroom in earnest. She buffs and polishes everything, including the bathroom window and the inside and outside of the aluminum window frame as well. She’s very keen to keep things clean and shiny.

But today none of that happened, and that’s what bothers me. Where is the steady buzz of the vacuum? Normally I can see Mr. Clean, often still in his pajamas, diligently tracking down and vacuuming up any and all bits of dust from every nook and cranny of their living room that he may have missed on the first sweep through.

Mr. Clean is like a kamikaze dust pilot. He spots his target, zooms in and poof, that dust ball is history. No wonder all the dust comes over here to hide out in my place. And usually, while Mr. Clean is attacking dust in the living room, Mrs. Clean is in the kitchen scrubbing and polishing the counter top and sink. Then she cleans the floor. Again.

They work as a team, cleaning and polishing, vacuuming and scrubbing and I’m so happy they found each other. It truly is a match made in heaven, which is why I’m concerned.

Now my neighbor in the back, Mrs. Mean, is another story. She used to be just as aggressive a cleaner as the Cleans, but all that changed because of an incident that occurred when I first moved into this building. She hasn’t spoken to me in years, and I doubt I will ever be forgiven for my mistake.

What happened was I hadn’t been in this apartment very long when one day I was in my office working on an article, and out of the corner of my eye I spot an elderly woman on her hands and knees keeling on the windowsill, outside of her bedroom window. My first frightening thought was that she was going to jump. I stood up and went out on my balcony to see if what I think I saw I really saw. I must have let out a gasp because she looked up and saw me standing on my balcony with my hand over my mouth and terror in my eyes.

You have to know that even though I say I live on the fifth floor, it is really the sixth floor since what we call the first floor in the USA is called the ground floor here, and they consider the second floor the first floor. Anyway it is long way down.


Then I realized she was trying to clean the inside of the deep flower wells that run along the front of our windows and as she scrambled to get back inside her window, I went back inside my apartment too. I happened to mention the incident to one of her sons a few weeks later and he obviously said something to his mother. She never got out on the window sill again, at least as far as I know, and she hasn’t spoken to me since either. Apparently it’s my fault  she’s a clean nut.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for neat and clean, it’s just that my neighbors seem to take the concept to whole ‘nuther level. Someone told me once that the Italian kitchen cabinet manufacturers have to put dozens of extra coats of varnish on the cabinet doors because the Italian women scrub the bejeebers out of them and have been known to scrub the doors down to the bare wood.

I don’t remember my neighbors in Genoa or Milan being quite so fanatical about cleaning, but then again it may just have been that I was too involved in my work to bother looking out the window. It's possible. But here in Saronno my neighbor’s cleaning habits have become part of my routine too. So while I don’t know what is going on over at the Cleans, I hope by tomorrow everything will be back to normal and they will be out there sweeping and washing and dusting and wiping and making everything right in their world - and mine too.