Alabastro di Volterra

Volterra, charming place that preserves artistic and architectural documentation of a unique cultural and historical layers. In the green heart of Tuscany, located on a high hill dominating, Volterra was the birthplace of the Etruscan civilization with its splendor. At the same time the development of the processing of the "soft rock", will mark, for better or for worse, the entire path millennial land, establishing a union with it still inseparable. Indissolubility entirely justified because, if in fact the alabaster was and is extracted and worked in various parts of the world, from Scotland to Spain, from Greece to the East, no territory is so directly identifiable with the development of this particular stone . The alabaster of Volterra seems made for the creative hands of man. Fine as the finest marble, translucent like the opal glass, transparent, flexible processing, valuable and variously colored, in the hands becomes docile acquiescence and makes her the most varied forms. And 'fascinating in its continuous and unpredictable changeability, the frailty that exposes it as the crystal to shatter shock, which nell'abbondono indolent, albeit slowly, it penetrates the liquid. In his appearance of glass, salt, jewelry, and in its ability to be born slowly over time and, just as mysteriously, grow and age creates a manufacture of high artistic value. The secret is in the play of light that creates subtle and haunting thicknesses. It 'hard to define the exact threshold where the material ends and begins its reflection. It 'difficult to identify how far it sinks in its soft light transparency. The varieties of alabaster are endless, since the appearance and texture of the material varies continuously with the change of the chemical composition of the land that surrounds it. In fact, the alabaster is hidden deep in the earth and man, over the centuries, has had to dig tunnels longer and longer to find it. There is, therefore, a constant commitment to the search for new deposits and the rational use of existing and, like any craft that produces artifacts in stone, it is easy to understand the relationship of dependency between the manufactured product and the raw material. True craftsmen are still here and in whites laboratories where, every day, they invent forms of art and craft, it is apparent the adequacy of the work to the needs of modern society. Alabaster, sensitive and fragile, especially of the hands of man needs to take shape, as in the time of the Etruscans, when the hands of artists and craftsmen already plasmavano their stories in the wrinkles of the glassy stone Volterra. Friezes and bas-reliefs, ornaments of urns, which possess an expressiveness and an effect such as to donate to view works of high grace and harmony.