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The art and craftsmanship of Dino Cognolato Following the tradition of sixteenth-century Italian artisans, the great restorer from Padua created a Bottega, where knowledge is at the core of every last detail. by Antonio Ghini THE ART AND CRAFTSMANSHIP OF DINO COGNOLATO // 69
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very day, at ten past six in the morning, a distinguished and courteous gentleman with a short beard and white hair arrives at the newsstand in Vigonza, a small town just outside Padua. He buys two newspapers of famously opposed political persuasion: “It’s only by comparing two opinions that you can seek to understand the truth,” he remarks. Shortly afterwards, having drunk a lukewarm cappuccino and some freshly squeezed orange juice, he will sit in his car in the still-deserted supermarket car park at Alì, almost opposite the large gates of the company that he owns, and read them carefully. He’s Dino Cognolato, who is 80 years “young” and starts the day after drinking his first coffee in bed, brought to him by his beloved wife, Lucia. “This way, I can read in peace. If I went in to the company, they’d get me involved in something straight away….” Whilst his brilliance has been responsible for marketing some of the most exclusive luxury brands, he prefers to leave the company premises entirely anonymous: “I never wanted to put a sign on it; if anyone wants us, they’ll find us….” It’s a large industrial warehouse, the biggest of the three that make up the company, and it’s more like the workshop of a jeweller specializing in embossing silver than a garage where cars are restored. This is because it’s jewels that immediately catch the eye of anyone fortunate enough to go in: unique Alfa Romeos, sumptuous Isotta Fraschinis, exquisite Bugattis, proud Mercedes or powerful Ferraris. Meanwhile, those who emboss the precious metal that covers them, and the upholsterers and fitters — all on a par with the historic figures of the automotive arts — work in a hushed atmosphere where even the sound of a hammer on sheet metal is more like music than noise. “Aluminum should be struck without ear plugs,” Dino insists, “because you can tell from the sound of the metal whether it has been beaten properly.” Cognolato’s company does have a name: it’s called Carrozzeria Nova Rinascente. “I chose this name when I moved from Padua; Gabriele d’Annunzio (poet, writer and legendary figure in Italian culture and politics during the first part of the last century, Ed.) created it when he resurrected a big Milan warehouse after a fire. It seemed like a good omen to me.” In fact, the Vigonza warehouse was an important step for him, the third generation of coachbuilders — “In Padua, my grandfather worked on horse-drawn carriages...” — because it meant not only putting behind him the company that had employed him — Officine Meccaniche della Stanga, which built trains
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and public transport vehicles and about which he commented “it changed ownership, employed engineers, and technicians like us were going backwards instead of forwards” — but also the small body shop he had opened in Padua when he was barely 21 years old. “I’ve been very lucky,” he says with his customary polite modesty. “I took evening classes in drawing,” one of the things that he still excels at today, “and I was valued as a draftsman at Stanga, where I had to draw at a scale of 1:1 on the materials used. I was then given the opportunity to study work timeframes and to design tools to make them faster and more efficient. I designed a bending tool and a riveting system for railway cars which worked very well....” Just hearing him say this, standing in his blue jacket next to a nearly completed 1957 BMW 507, you understand that his luck did not come about on its own. “Then, in Padua, when I’d opened the body shop on via Niccolò Tommaseo and already restored a Lancia Aprilia and a Bugatti, I was brought a new 600 Fanalone by the nearby FIAT dealership, which they’d not been able to sell. It was an antique ivory colour. I had a colour sample from before the war that suggested combinations and also showed how to do the edging between two shades. I painted the roof in metallic ruby red. When the car went back to the dealership, it sold after five hours! They immediately brought me another white one, and this time I
painted/did the roof in metallic emerald green. From then on, I started to provide this service regularly and was paid well and promptly. But that wasn’t enough: what made my reputation was a customer known to be demanding to the point of obsession. He was a famous architect from Padua, called Iscra. He’d bought a Jaguar XK120. We completely restored it, including the burl woodwork. It was a runaway success. People in Padua started to say, “If he’s made Iscra happy, then he’ll be lucky all his life!” In truth, however, there was slightly more to it: Cognolato brought about that luck with his own hands, and from that moment he knew how to masterfully interpret the need inside each of us to give meaning to our lives. This involves combining the right amounts of the opposites of reason and irrationality in each of us, and that is extremely difficult. Dino solved this problem by creating his own microcosm, where he complements the rationality of his own natural professional mastery with a mix of emotions and curiosity about the magic that stems from nature and from the most extraordinary things made by man. His imagination is fueled by the history of technology, interest in art as a Renaissance expression of the workshops of the great masters, and a philosophical synthesis, understood as the reading and practical interpretation of everyday and spiritual values. “Functional things should be beautiful...,” and he cites the Great Pyramid of Giza and the rope
Dino, the Master, and his timeworn instruments.
rollers who gave the rope a slightly flared shape; the extraordinary form of the Eiffel Tower, constructed off-site and assembled without a hiccup using 22mm rivets — these are his words — for the bolting; and the talent of the Italian engineer who made the Golden Gate piles, and had to find rock under 5 m of sludge at the bottom. But the real model on which he has methodically based his style as an entrepreneur is that of Italian Renaissance art. Looking at his Vigonza factory, it’s easy to imagine it as one of the workshops of the great masters of the past. He mentions Michelangelo, Raphael, Mantegna; he also refers to Giotto and Donatello, who traveled with a large entourage to take their art to the palaces and churches across half of Italy. He continues: “When a very young Leonardo went to Verrocchio’s workshop in Florence, he was put to work looking after the chicken coop and the rabbits....” The statement seems somewhat surprising, but Cognolato explains:
“...the chicken coop because eggs were mixed with earth to make the paints, and the rabbits because they made glue out of their bones.” As the Italian proverb says, “Learn the art; you never know when you might need it.” This is an example, just as the young apprentice that we come across in the workshop is an example: he’s working patiently on aluminum rims to be shaped with a big wooden hammer. “This young man has been here for two weeks, and he’s doing a training course on working aluminum. It’s gone well so far; the next stage, the hardest one, will be hammering out a half-sphere. When he’s able, he can start working on the cars for real.” It’s difficult to say whether young Leonardo’s smile when he was overseeing the chickens and rabbits was the same as the smile we saw on this young man’s face, but the joy of learning a trade under such expert hands must surely draw some parallels.
Cognolato, the philosopher, will find out, however, alongside him. Spending a whole day with him, there are so many moments and phrases that demonstrate this. It’s worth reading them, in an almost random sequence, to understand what his world is based on: Nature: “Colours need to be in the right proportions and the right shades – you only have to look at nature and birds....” Professional ethics: “I don’t deal in cars, I restore them. Buying, restoring and selling would be like betraying our work, mine, that of my sons, Roberto and Paolo, and that of my workers. Because if you restore a car that you want to sell, then there’s a temptation not to do it as well as you should, or to remove original parts to store away in order to earn more. For us, dealing would be wrong, and inappropriate as well.” Still on the subject of restoration, with a clear refer-
THE ART AND CRAFTSMANSHIP OF DINO COGNOLATO // 71
Cognolato knows exactly what’s needed to reach perfection, from the 1:1 drawing of the model perfected using techniques from the past to the beating of the metal sheet, and the welding, along with the knowledge garnered from the studies the mechanisms even the most creative ones, found on the cars restored by him.
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THE ART AND CRAFTSMANSHIP OF DINO COGNOLATO // 73
ence to the American over-restoring style, he remarks that “this is no longer testimony to the era,” adding that “all that glitters is not gold. Wear and tear is also part of a car’s history; you need to salvage everything that can be salvaged — restoring costs more than building from scratch — but it’s the evidence of the original that counts.” Art: “The automobile was created as an industrial product; it’s not art. But if, after many years, it becomes a masterpiece that even young people like, that car has been illuminated.” 1942 Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 SS Bertone
Socio-cultural analysis: “Because of their culture and tradition, people from the Far East love their cars deeply and discreetly. In America, it’s different; it’s a young nation, and Protestantism encourages the valuing of wealth.”
1955 Ferrari 750 Monza Scaglietti
Business skills: “You need to know how to measure the growth of a company: those who encourage you to grow up to a certain point start to give you salt water to quench your thirst. You’ve expanded, bought equipment and got yourself into debt, and if work is taken away from you, you’ll find yourself with your warehouse closed, and in the tall grass.” Reputation: “For money, you can go to the bank and ask for a loan, but not with your name!”
1938 Lancia Astura Cabrio Pininfarina
1950 Lancia Aurelia Zagato
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Personal integrity: “My primary objective is to provide peace of mind for my employees, and to involve them. I need to be able to make them want to spend the day at work.” This philosophy also extends to a formula for personal peace of mind: “If there’s no solution, why worry? But if there is a solution, why are you worried?” Cognolato is objective about the practicality of his philosophy: seeing how he works, it’s not surprising that his prices are at levels comparable to those of American restorers, but he also has a couple of sayings for this: “Sell high, but weigh fairly” and “Remember that the cleverest man is the honest one.” The critical viewpoint that his “school of philosophy” expresses with wit: “Counterfeit cars are like women who have plastic surgery and can’t smile any more,” and, speaking of replicas, he makes an observation worthy of Aristotle: “You can tell whether a Vuitton bag is real or an imitation by how the woman carrying it walks,” but, he adds, “mind you, if, one day, imitations were no longer being produced, this would suggest that things were not
going as well as before for the company!” We look around — it’s now after four o’clock in the afternoon — and it’s time to find out how his business operates, what his relationships with his customers are like, and what the scope of the company’s work is. The first thing to know is that Dino’s two pillars are his sons, Paolo and Roberto, who are supported by several long-standing employees who seem to be part of the family. Paolo, a draftsman like his father, applies new technologies, while Dino continues to work, standing up, on large drawing tables to produce vehicles on a 1:1 scale. (Currently in his black apron, he changes outfits depending on the work that he does I suggest this wording could be deleted. including sporting elegant English jackets when he takes a guest to lunch.) Paolo animates the completed drawings using the computer miracles that Dino resigns himself to. Roberto, a big fan of motorbikes (which it just so happens he restores as a hobby), looks after relations with the most important international customers, and also works within the company himself. Carrozzeria Nuova Rinascente’s scope of activity — not forgetting that this is the name chosen by Cognolato — is very clear: “we do bodywork, upholstery and electrical installation. We don’t get involved with mechanics — the customer is free to choose who to use for that. I don’t understand mechanics, and I don’t want to give guarantees that I can’t meet. However, we do deal with related aesthetic details.” When a car arrives, and throughout the entire production process, Dino, a great photography enthusiast, documents everything: “We strip it down and check every component in order to see what can be salvaged and repaired. The car is mapped end to end, and drawn by me personally on a 1:1 scale.” This immediately gives you a sense of the seriousness of the approach. “Then, masking is created from the drawing, which enables sheet metal to be beaten out where necessary. We salvage everything we can, and also carry out micro-welds or apply reinforcement strips where the metal is worn out.” If the Vigonza workshop can be compared to an artisan jeweler’s, its vault has an incredible archive at its disposal, perfectly organized and curated. It started off with a catalog of colors used for the 600 Fanalones, and now it’s a kind of secret world heritage site.
“Our customers can come and see what we do when we’re working on their cars, whenever they want to. We have no secrets and I don’t have an office on the first floor where they can sit down.… (note the subtle irony). The customer is introduced to the senior assistant who’s overseeing his or her vehicle, and can provide any information required.” He smiles when we ask if he has customers who are somewhat reluctant to dig into their pockets… “No, we’ve never had any like that…. The best are the Swiss with their Calvinist mentality. They want the work to be done well and are prompt with payment, but if something isn’t right, they point it out to you politely.” One last bit of curiosity: how do payments work? “It’s simple; they follow the progress of the work. We invoice every 200 hours, and it’s a method that provides mutual guarantees.…” It’s evening by now, and we’ve been with Dino since early this morning, when he drank his cappuccino and freshly squeezed juice. We’ve followed him everywhere. We went for lunch in one of his usual restaurants, where, because he’s a health fanatic, he prefers fish — Venice is not far away — and has a weakness for scallops. We have enough notes to write a book; he’s told us so many other things about Mercedes, who commissioned him to rebuild, for their museum, an aerodynamic model in aluminum, the bodywork for which was used during the war to make aircraft: “Lovely to work with them, very well-documented, thorough, always ready to help, prompt payers.” He told us about the time he helped to convert the GTO Evoluzione into an F40 with Michelotto, a long-standing external consultant with Ferrari, and from Padua, like him. That’s right. Dino himself: the magical F40 originated with them! He also told us about the reconstruction commissioned by the Maranello company of the 125 S, the first Ferrari from 1947: “Enzo Ferrari said that he found part of his first car, which had been restored, in America.” Everybody knows that this part never existed, but it was his name that was chosen for the reconstruction. One last question remains: what dream does he still have? “Here it is,” and he shows us the chassis of a 1924 Fiat 525, with all of the original mechanical parts. “This is the car that I am making for myself.” From the way he says it and from the time that it’s likely to take, it seems like the present he wants to give himself for his eightieth birthday. And the bodywork? “It was never made; it remained a design, no. 1064 in the FIAT style centre, dated March 13, 1931, and
published in 1974 in a booklet by the ITALIAN FIAT Register, entitled Unseen Sports Vehicles from Fiat Production 1923-1933. Then I went to the FIAT Historic Centre on Via Chiabrera in Turin, where I found several very helpful documents and drawings that I could use to build it. It won’t be a restoration, but a construction as of now.” As of now — a good way to sum up this project of Dino’s—one of cultured nostalgia. Alone, in the dark of evening, driving towards the motorway, I get the feeling that I have had one of the best days of my life. It’s true. You can see people for years without really getting to know them. Possibly because often there’s not much to know. Then, in a single day, you discover an entire world by listening to a man who is usually reserved and not very talkative. A man who, with this long and intense conversation, may have wanted to talk to himself. Wonderful. I think that’s why I hugged him when it was time to say goodbye.
1957 Maserati 450S
1962 Ferrari 250 GTO
1957 Maserati 200 SI
In these pages, some of the masterly restorations made in Dino Cognolato’s Bottega in Vigonza. 1958 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa
THE ART AND CRAFTSMANSHIP OF DINO COGNOLATO // 75
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