After bidding our resident fresco repair stud muffin, Nicola, a hasty "Buon Giorno e Buon Lavoro!" we both headed off to paint, teach, gather photographs in a hill town (Chuck) or print at the Studio di Estampi e Libri Fatto al Mano (Tina). Alas...the beautiful book box that I'd taken days to make was drying while weighed down by a few city stones and a water bottle. The bottle had a tiny pin prick in the bottom and leaked ever so slowly throughout the night. So about a cup of water was turning the handmade Venetian paper, beautiful book cloth and two days worth of work into a paper mache glob. The box had to go immediately to BICU (a newly established Book Intensive Care Unit in the window sill) and will be in rehabilitation until we leave on Wednesday. I am reminded of the floods in Florence in the late 1960's and the regular floods in Venice - what disasters!!
Nicola, however, is methodically moving along every day in the arched portico of the monastery carefully securing the plaster and then cleaning it with some sort of bicarbonate/ammonia solution. The transformation is astonishing! The monastery was built in 1690 , so a 320 year accumulation of soot, grime and a few battles has taken a toll. The students will be having their final critique in the monastery courtyard on Sunday - perhaps with the Filarmonica Di Corciano (since 1876) playing on the ramparts of the city wall in the background. I think everyone in the town is a member of the orchestra. They have been practicing every afternoon and evening - I particularly love hearing the teenage drummers at the entry gate and the Madrigal singers lamenting in the courtyard.
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