An Economy through the Centuries
Anghiari, being a rustic community, was a center with shops rich in craftsmanship. The government of Camaldolesi Abbots ( !2th - 14th century) was, with is liberality, the most efficient incentive towards the expansion of the village beginning with the vivacious market and the artisan shops; potters, iron smiths, stone masters and woodworkers, weavers, shoemakers, millers, ecc. The importance of building activity, maybe the pillar of the Anghiarian economy, was verified also by the fact that the only corporation recognized by the statute was that of Masters of Stone and Timber.Between 1500 and 1800 the art of iron working and the production of firearms, rare pieces of a refined art guarded in important museum collections nationally and internationally, was affirmed with fortune. The antique writings from the Municipal Archive hands us down names that at times prove to be more than a generation of operating activity in the same family of valuable craftsmen.
In 1424 fifteen iron shops existed in Anghgiari. In 1485 Ciprani di (son of) Baldassari di (son of) Guido,obtained a license from the Anghiarian Community to open a leather tanning shop. In 1486 Birsina di Batista, a wood-cutter, did the door of Saint Agostino. On the 4th of August, 1554, Gregorio di Marco da Modigliana, armarolo for having made lead bullets for the muskets and lances for the artillery and other things for the corp.
Between 1700 and 1800 in Anghiari, we find a Matassi designer and a Vallini engraver who were also gunsmiths. It seems that the bulino had found prevalent applications in the decorating of arms, in the refinishing of iron, in the fabrication of brands, and sometimes in the counterfeiting of coins...In Toscana, towards the close of 1700, economic activities were a notable impulse for the new politician Grand Duke Leopoldo I. It is certain that in Anghiari the products were benefitted by environmental factors like the woods which furnished fuel for the working process, and the ironand copper mines active on the Rognosi Mountains, between Montauto and the Ponte alla Piera, on an antique Roman road. Above all, though, the area had a great tradition of craftsmen able to offer a highly qualified work of art.In the early years of the last century Anghiari had a population of five thousand habitants.
There was a wool-mill for fine and coarse cloth which employed 30, a leather tanning shop which employed 6, a grill and railing factory,a wool dying factory with 25 workers, 20 crockeries and gunshops, 13 water-mills, 6 iron works.The weaving industry used a cultivation of98 acres for canvas and one of 147 acres for linen. The cultivation of woad, for dye, was also considerable. In 1833 we can speak about important businesses; a wool mill, eight fulling mills, five dye shops, two hat and felt factories, due archibusiere a factory of surgical instruments, two powder shops, three earthenware kiln shops. These businesses were purely artisan and on a shop level. Work in iron and canvas was also frequent. Up until and for part of this century, the artisan level of remained traditional.
Tipographic art surged and affirmed in a factory of musical instruments.Among the businesses deserving mazimum honor we remember in 1873 the crockery in terracotta presented by potters Luconi and Mondini at the Universal Expo of Viena. In 1910 at the Expo in Milano the shoes by the artisan Desiero Allegretti, and in 1935 the lutemaker Milton Poggini recieved the Cross of Merit and the Medal of Gold at the International Expo in Paris.
It is also for these illustrious precedents that Anghiari felt the need to create a new structure that reconnecting with the local, popular, artistic tradition, could also repond to a modern artisan. So, in 1962 with a decrete from the President of the Republic, the State Institute of Art of Anghiari for the Art of wood and restoration of antique furniture (l'Istituto Statale d'Arte di Anghiari per l'Arte del legno e il restauro del mobile antico) began.The Artisan Market (La Mostra Mercato dell'Artigianato) which takes place every year at the end of April wants to reppresent the rediscovery and the recognition of those artisans that, heirs of an illustrious past, present in this exhibition products of their mastery, methodology, and originality,
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