Forma Mentis

I am identified as an activity in which the objects or decorations are made entirely by hand, or using tools always operated by man.

As far as I’m concerned I prefer to define myself with the word “handmade”, it seems more complete, fuller, and meaningful. It is not definable when I was born, because thinking about it, in one form or another I have always been there.

Initially, I was not recognized or identified with a specific term, simply the man needed objects to live and survive and so if he built them by hand, I joined the arts only in a second moment. Yes, exactly, Arte, exactly where my name comes from.

To be what I am is not enough to have excellent manual skills, although this is very often taken for granted.

There is a need for good taste, technique, years and years of study, research, and practice to get to be considered part of the family of the arts. Over time my name changed, and even the definitions attributed to it, for a period I was taken for granted, then there was a time when I became excellence, true luxury, authenticity. For years I have made travel millions of people to reach the Homeland of excellence of handmade and quality, beautiful Italy. The Made in Italy also understood as a model of industrial organization, for its combination of links with the territory, production, creation, distribution, and marketing.

They were all crazy about custom-made clothes, custom feather hats, and high-quality fabrics.

After the economic boom, everything went to speed up, the machinery took over, the idea of mass reproduction fascinated as a novelty, and as it allowed to optimize costs and time. In time, however, without making too much noise, I went to disperse, they gradually replaced or redefined me with terms not appropriate to my true identity, or that generalized my original meaning. For a while I stayed in the shadows, not understanding what was going on.

Now I’m realizing that the society around me is increasingly relying on superficial principles to unite with the mass. There is no longer the ability to recognize what is really beautiful and well done, because what matters is only being identified, the ability to be recognized as belonging to a certain social state, and this happens by wearing garments with logos and signs of recognition. After a moment like the one we have experienced in the last year, there is a need to rediscover the true beauty, what matters. We have been limited in the movements but not only, but also our mind has been confined and especially bombarded with bad things and sadness. As after every crisis, we need a moment of rebirth, of rediscovery of beautiful things, of art; but this time we will be more aware, of what we buy, of materials, of all that is behind the finished product: workmanship, design, history.

We need to go back to the origins, to the contact with nature, to the use of sustainable and natural materials, to stop damaging our Mother Earth, already in great difficulty because of our haste and selfishness.

We live in an age in which many words are misinterpreted, or I take on meanings different from the original one. As for my name, I can say that I feel called into question even when I have nothing to do with that situation. There is an overabundance in the use of my name.

I think there is a need to re-educate society based on sound and sound principles.

The rediscovery of beauty and uniqueness, for example, true quality, beauty, and as of last, but not as important: relationships.

The new Luxury is the ability to understand what matters, to be able to understand the true beauty, which is often not visible with a superficial look, but there is a need to dig deep, study, and understand. The new luxury is based on experience, spirit, and thought.

Being able to recognize that there are things that money can’t buy, but that comes from within, and you need a particular sensitivity to understand them.

The new luxury is being able to cultivate your critical sense, curiosity and get lost in research and experience of discovery, and be able to recognize excellence.

This manifesto aims to reflect on the importance it still has and will have more and more handmade, discovering small artisan realities that surround us and are reinventing, always without losing their fundamental values, not to disappear in time, and to be known all over the world.

It wants to be a message to communicate the importance of sharing, globalization, and cultural appropriation that can arise once you create a web among the artisan realities of excellence around the world.

For this reason, I decided to discover some of the artisan realities that surround me and that, each in a different way, are trying not to disappear innovating and sharing values and knowledge.

The intent is to be able to one day continue this search around the world, and tear down the fictional walls that have been created between countries during the years.