Spring Rebirth and Hope

By Chiara Basile, Florence Istituto de’ Bardi Director

All seasons speak to our senses in their own peculiar ways, but spring is surely the one that inspires the broadest variety of emotions. It is the moment when nature blossoms and comes back to life in all of its strength and magnitude. Spring and its multiple transformations undoubtedly represent the ideal season for working with your hands.

Craftsmanship blossoms and comes back to life in the warm spring days and so does the Istituto de’ Bardi.

The Istituto de’ Bardi is a non-profit foundation that promotes craftsmanship and educates people about the artisanal arts, and whose creation is a charming story of partonage set in Florence in the 19th century. The Institute was founded in Florence on January 1, 1829, upon the will of Count Girolamo de’ Bardi, who devoted a portion of his conspicuous inheritance (no less than 50,000 ecus!) to the creation of a school aimed at providing free education to the needy artisans of the City of Florence.

The institute went through some troubled times until 1865, when the Istituto de’ Bardi finally established its headquarters at the Palazzo Capponi, in the working class neighbourhood of Santo Spirito, where the Count Girolamo de’ Bardi had wanted it to be. Palazzo Capponi (Number 2, Via de’ Michelozzi), next to the Basilica di Santo Spirito) is still, almost two centuries later, the Istituto de’ Bardi’s current headquarters.

In 1966, Florence was hit by a terrible flood that severely damaged the Oltrarno, the district that was known as the beating heart of the Florentine ancient tradition of craftsmanship, where the institute was located. The Istituto de’ Bardi continued its educational activities, but was flooded and its building was seriously damaged. Lacking funds, the school for artisans was closed.

In more recent times, Palazzo Capponi was entirely restored and given a new lease on life.

Count Girolamo de’ Bardi’s original design was refreshed and modernized, and in the finally adequate headquarters the Istituto de’ Bardi went back to its original splendour, blending with Florentine life and the Oltrarno neighbourhood.

Unfortunately, craftsmanship as a practice nowadays is scarcely attractive to young people, and it is difficult to recruit new artisans. Production and distribution of artisanal works is going through a difficult phase. The Istituto de’ Bardi has the ambitious mission to promote the culture of artisanal know-how beyond the city’s borders and enhance its practices with experimentation and new technologies so that handcraft becomes a formidable tool for growth.

The Istituto de’ Bardi’s activities are open also to foreign artisans and artists and to the new techniques that they may represent, attempting to enhance synergies between local artisans’ experiences and the new international craftsmanship techniques. This combination can only but nourish new ideas for the promotion and education to craftsmanship.

The Istituto de’ Bardi’s collaboration with an important American educational institution such as Florida State University, meant opening our laboratories to a young and international audience, moving the attention from the object - the artisans’ product - to the subject, the artisan, and promoting not only the product in itself, but all the culture and tradition that lies behind it. In this way, artisanal activity can become an innovative, experience-based tourist attraction.

Visual emotions and the materials that students touch and work with, offer them the chance to experience their own intense emotions and allow them to discover some of Florence’s esteemed artisanal heritage.