Signor Casoni''s Workshop

A VISIT WITH THE CORZETTI STAMP MAKER OF CHIAVARI

- Adam Leith Gollner

We’d come to see the wood carver in Chiavari, one of those perfect small scale coastal Ligurian dream towns scrunched up between the Mediterranean Sea and the Apennine mountains.

Arriving at his address on Via Bighetti, we found ourselves in front of a spare, if elegantly dilapidated, storefront. An old wooden rocking horse stood sentinel at the open door. Inside there were statues everywhere. Sculptures of minotaurs, headless torsos, and flying angels hung next to oil paintings of Garibaldi and Stalin. Countless chisels and wooden mallets and old iron tools were lined up on a workbench. 

“Buon giorno?” 

No answer came. On the verge of leaving, we heard a holler and shuffled back out into the sunlight. To our right, in the adjacent courtyard, shaded by a sensationally beautiful marble church, a focused-looking man was bent over a rotting hunk of wood. He wore a white artisan’s smock dotted with ink and paint stains, and he had a can of Coca-Cola in his hand. He was using the soft drink to clean the thing: a large, weather-beaten bust of Aphrodite. “It’s amazing how Coca-Cola removes stains,” explained the gentleman through his unruly salt-and-pepper mustache. “I carve as well as restore nautical figureheads. You know the British vessel called The Baboon? I did that one.”

We watched him scrub some more Coke into the whorls of Aphrodite’s hair, and then he stood up to greet us. “Signor Franco Casoni, intagliatore. You came for the corzetti, sì?”