Style and techinque
consultant as for the sustainability of fishing these extraordinary organisms: “regulating and controlling its fishing, as well as sanctioning abuses is fundamental” he says. A member of the World Jewellery Confederation (Cibjo) as president of the Coral Board, he adheres to Csr (Corporate Social Responsibility), the only organization operating with United Nations co-operation. Since 1973 he has devoted the same passion used to defend the natural environment and support his ideas also to coral-working excellence: “After I got my degree I started working with artisans, above all cutters, who taught me to recognise the value of coral. Its natural shapes are already a clear hint of the possible final result you can get. This ability to foresee the best final shape was really useful when my father sent me around the world to buy coral, since I could estimate the value of the raw piece.” At the end of the Seventies, Vincenzo set up the cameos working and the one of Asian coral imported from Japan. The same years saw also an increase of exports. Between 1973 and 1983 he went often to Taiwan, where he opened a workshop to use local working techniques and purchase the precious raw material. A material then worked into ever new shapes by artists and designers in Torre del Greco, whose projects pass also through artisans’ wise hands. “After so many years I am still surprised when I see the new works by our engravers,” so Vincenzo. Coral working requires a craft which is not easy to master and above all to find. Thus in 1993 Basilio Liverino established a specialising school “offering three years of general education, where students approach classic subjects, such as Italian and History of Art, and attend the first practical workshops; then there are two specialising years when they choose the course they want to follow among jewellery, coral engraving and coral cut,”
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says Vincenzo. The work must be learnt in the workshop, as usual: experience is a precious treasure, an exquisite heritage every young student has to learn so that his hands, his heart and his mind can create the masterpieces of highest handicraft that make the Liverino firm world-renowned. For this reason the Liverinos decided that after the school years the students should attend other workshops: also to prove that the school “was not only a resource of our company, but an asset of the whole community.” Coral working implies that handicraft and creativity constantly dialogue with technology: and if the tools are extensions of the hand, research has designed new machines giving further power and precision to the hand, while never substituting that “touch” only man can manage. Asian countries are the main manufacturers of highly sophisticated machines to work the coral, which Liverinos buy for their company as well as for the school: “I deem important that our students learn how to work with modern machines coping with the market new rhythms”, Enzo says, while stressing that the same machines must often be customised. “The metier d’art is the expression of its land: it favours its rebirth. But the work must not be only a homage to the past. It’s fundamental to be able to create contemporary subjects, so as to spread one’s customer portfolio, while in the same time keeping the beauty of our traditions intact.” In one of the famous coral cribs created by Liverino, a Holy Child is inside a cave among angels with a very delicate hue: his small fingers stretched towards the sky are created with an extreme ability, giving them an exquisite transparency. But there are no hints of nostalgia or melancholy in his eyes: you read beauty, pride, the contemporaneity of an image so traditional that it seems timeless, and the nobility of a material bearing life within itself.
EMANUELE ZAMPONI
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12/12/12 17:52