A BABY VOLCANO
(letter from Enzo Mari to Bruno Danese)

from catalogue  "un vulcano bambino" - Bruno Danese Gallery - Milan - november 1986

Dear Bruno,
on several occasions we have talked about whether
we might use the ground floor of your showrooms for
exhibitions not directly related to your production.
  The purpose should be to encourage certain areas
of research and also to involve fresh design potential,
in the hope of a prospect different to that of today’s
"made in design".
  Among the students who attended a course of mine
at the Milan Politecnico University, one in particular
has been doing some things that could perhaps be
shown in this programme of exhibitions.
I refer to a strange object which looks as if it might
belong to the perverse experimentalism of our day,
but I don’t think it does. It is a small volcano.
It appealed to me at once also because I happen to be
very fond of volcanoes. Take for example the
silkscreen print designed in recent years for
your products, and "Operation Vesuvius" for the Galleria
"Il Centro" in Naples – not to mention a collection
of postcards and four or five volcano ascents.
  To my mind the volcano, by its presence alone,
casts doubt on the relationship which man, today in particular,
has established with Nature. From the volcano sprang
the original elements of life, and it is still today the most
visible manifestation of the drifting of the continents,
of their separation and overlapping: and hence,
of the continuous renewal of the conditions necessary for life.
  The volcano too, like everything natural, is today
being attacked by an utterly degenerate artificialization.
  This can clearly be seen in densely populated areas like Italy.
  Nevertheless the volcano knows how to defend itself and,
in a pantheistic sense, like a god
(against whom no resistance can be put up),
it is a tabula rasa.
  In this world of cuckoo clocks I cannot but take sides with it,
although, l realize, this sends me back (perhaps?)
to primitive forms of sacrality. But now let’s turn
to the small volcano, in the sense of a baby volcano, or,
as its creator calls it, a "vulcanello". Let us talk about why
it was made and why I find it beautiful apart from
the symbolico-sacral aspects just mentioned.
  To say why it was made entails a brief mention
of the subject of one of my lessons and of its effect upon
Ezio Colombrino telo became the author of this baby volcano.
  It is widely held among students today that it is dificult
to achieve meaningful designs
(everything eel to have been done already), whilst forgetting,
however, that design only comes about as
the denial of what exists.
  The denials of the ’60s and of the ’70s produced,
for better or worse, their effect.
  The trouble is that today the things to be denied
are "different"( "different" in the sense that
they are not reduced to mannerism within a range
of now clearly predetermined negations).
  To the students of schools in the South, who have
the added difficulty of a local lack of industry,
l must rub it in by saying that for their own benefit
and for the South, in general, instead of training as architects,
they should be training for the raft of entrepreneurship.
  Apart from anything else, experience tells us that when
they started the best industrial entrepreneurs of "design"
today (the Gavinas, ourself, the Zanottas...),
whilst they could count on cultural capital,
were practically without any financial capital.
  Ezio Colombrino, a Neapolitan, was struck by
these lines of argument. Although he lacked even
the most rudimentary forms of capital, he decided
to make an attempt. First of all, he had to think about what
to produce in the context of Naples.
  Let us examine different typologies and pause to consider
that of the souvenir.
  There is always a demand (like it or not, but we shall try
to enter the entrepreneur's mind) for this.
  Tourism is the biggest national resource.
Let us also analyse the three market sectors:
the low, the middle and the upper.
  The stalls and the boutiques of Venice provide an ample
  response to all three: from the gilded tin gondolas
to varying qualities of blown glassware.
  In Naples can be found only the lower quality products,
unless you want to go to the antiques market.
  So, one might realistically attempt a production for
the upper-medium market. In the city there are still
many old craftsmen and also a great many more
"unemployed" young, ready perhaps to invest
some of their time capital. The thing to do, therefore,
would be to set up a cooperative.
  Ezio Colombrino energetically set about the task
of trying to form such a cooperative,
with alternating fortunes: his partners often changed.
  The idea of two collateral products occurred:
one which might bring in immediate earnings,
aimed at the medium-low market and bearing in mind
that some members of the cooperative possessed
neither craft nor culture and the other
at a higher quality market.
  The simplest symbols of the city were looked for:
Punchinello (and it was decided to call the cooperative
"calimone", which is the local dialect word
for the gesture of derision typical of this character),
the blood of San Gennaro, Vesuvius...
  One day Ezio showed me some "vulcanelli"’.
  These were made with fragments of "vesicular"
lava from the slopes of the volcano,
which are very hard to find.
The grey ones are found on Mount Somma,
and therefore date from periods earlier
than the Pliny eruption; the red ones (cataracchie in dialect)
are more recent.
  Once the stones have been found and chosen,
processing is limited to flattening the base and
to digging out the crater, with no interference
whatever to the shape of the little volcano.
  The tools used are as primitive as I have ever seen:
a hoe and an old file for a chisel.
  If something is dropped into the cone to produce smoke
– a cigarette end, an incense stick or a "tricche tracche"
(one of the many fireworks to be found
on Neapolitan street-stalls) – the effect is surprising.
  The small volcano is alive... So alive that my sacral respect
for volcanoes prevents me from thinking of it as a souvenir...
  I want to add another word or two about its formal quality.
In recent products one often notices a search, for texture.
  This frequently means re-worked or adulterated material.
  In this case, perhaps unique in its anomaly,
the material has not been messed about (the makers
have confined themselves to flattening out a base and
to boring a hole in the top: if these operations were not
necessary the "vulcanelli" would truly be the children of Vulcan).
  In a panorama where everything is and has to be redeveloped,
this "vulcanello" seems to me worth remembering.

Enzo Mari    
June 1986

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