Carrara marble, the stuff of Michelangelo’s David and a symbol of Italian luxury, has run into hard times amid the world financial crisis and growing competition from abroad.
“The finishing of marble and other materials such as granite is in a very deep crisis,” said Marco Tonelli, a city official in Carrara, the Tuscan home of the famous white and blue-gray stone.
“China, as well as India and Brazil, have invested in tools to work marble and granite, and now they are finishing it locally instead of sending it to Carrara as they used to,” said Roberto Dell’Amico, who owns a workshop in Carrara that his father opened 45 years ago.
PHOTO: AFP
“Twenty or 30 years ago, most marble or granite produced in the world was finished in Carrara, but today that is no longer the case,” said Dell’Amico, who employs 13 men, down from 18 a decade ago.
Exports last year of finished marble products and granite dropped 16 percent and 27 percent respectively from a year ago in terms of value, experts say, while unions say some 2,000 jobs have been lost in recent years.
Brazil, a major producer of granite, cuts its own blocks at much more competitive prices and exports them directly.
“We should export our know-how, because even if we will never be able to compete with the Chinese in simple cutting of marble, we can still rival them in finishing thanks to our artisans who often work the material by hand,” Dell’Amico said.
“There’s no school for learning this skill,” said Alvise Lazzareschi, 52, the descendant of a noble Tuscan family whose ancestors have extracted marble for five centuries.
“You learn it when you are little, when dad comes home and starts cursing a rock that cracked in the wrong place,” he said.
Lazzareschi also noted the dangers of marble-cutting, an all-male domain.
Few have not lost family members in the quarries, despite strengthened safety norms through the years.
“We can’t work if it’s too cold, or if it’s too hot, or if there’s too much rain or wind. We work between 160 and 170 days a year,” said Franco Petacchi, 50.
“I have 24 employees, all men. It’s a difficult skill and dangerous. You won’t find a woman in a quarry,” Petacchi said, pointing to a statue of his uncle, who died in a mining accident.
Petacchi’s grandfather was a quarry foreman, while his father had a concession, which he took over.
The town earns about 15 million euros (US$20 million) a year in taxes and concessions.
While demand for cutting and finishing is down, extraction continues apace at a rate of about 1 million tonnes of marble per year.
The supply appears limitless, leading Lazzareschi to remark with confidence: “The world will end before Carrara marble runs out.”
Antonio Chiappini, another expert, said that the activity had little waste.
“Marble is like a pig. You don’t throw anything away, from the noble product, to the earth which is used for backfill, to the debris used to make calcium carbonate,” used in the food and cosmetic industries, Chiappini said.
“I have no problems with the Chinese or others copying me,” said Alberto Devoti, who runs cutting and finishing operations. “I simply have to stay ahead of the game by always offering something new [so that] those who copy will always come in second.”
Despite the help of high-tech equipment — digitized machinery and high-pressure waterjet cutting machines — Devoti says it is the artisan who makes the difference.
“The top of this marble column required two weeks of work by hand, using a chisel and sandpaper, to obtain the desired result,” Devoti said, caressing the ornate piece.
Devoti’s two brothers and his son work also for the family business that has won lucrative contracts overseas, such as cladding a mosque in Oman with marble.
They have also come up with innovative products such as thin, undulating marble plaques decorated with copies of Dutch painter Piet Mondrian’s geometric creations.
However, with the financial crisis and competition biting into revenues, the sector “needs the help of the political world to promote products, fund research and spur banks to support small companies,” Devoti said.
Marble finishers “suffer from their small size and their isolation, and they have been unable to join forces,” Tonelli said.
“All in all, these companies have been unable to cope with the end of their near-monopoly on finishing marble and granite,” he said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats