Category: Materials and Craft

I was standing in a damp, dimly lit sacristy outside Palermo last autumn, tracing the edge of a sixteenth-century saint, when I realized how much we misinterpret these walls. Most textbooks treat the fresco technique explained as if it were…

I remember standing on a scaffold in a crumbling palazzo near Syracuse, squinting through the midday glare at a fragment of a frieze. Most people would have just seen a pretty pattern, but I was obsessed with how the tin-glaze…

I was standing on a scaffold in a small village outside of Orvieto last autumn, scraping at a section of a facade that had been “restored” with modern, mass-produced tiles, and I felt a genuine sense of grief. People often…

I remember standing in a narrow alleyway in Naples last October, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and espresso, staring at a crumbling lintel that everyone else had dismissed as “decaying.” My hands were coated in a…

I was standing on a scaffold in a courtyard near Tivoli last autumn, my fingers tracing a particularly deep void in a weathered block, when I realized how much we misinterpret this material. Most people—and certainly most glossy interior design…

I was in a small workshop outside Carrara last autumn, the kind of place where the air is more stone dust than oxygen, when I saw a young apprentice trying to “fix” a hairline fracture in a slab using a…

I was standing in a crumbling courtyard near Syracuse last autumn, my knees aching from the humidity, when I saw a contractor pointing at a beautiful piece of travertine and calling it “imperfect.” He wanted to grind it down, to…

I was standing in a damp basement in Ravenna last autumn, tracing the edge of a crumbling wall, when I realized most people look at a facade and see only a color or a texture. They talk about “heritage” as…

I was standing in a damp basement in Ravenna last Tuesday, tracing the jagged fracture of a sixteenth-century limestone block, when I saw it: a patch of grey, rigid Portland cement shoved into a joint that clearly demanded breath. It…

I was kneeling in the damp dust of a crumbling courtyard near Syracuse last autumn, my fingers tracing a hairline fracture that shouldn’t have been there. Most people look at a peeling facade and see decay, but I saw a…