The Trade
School
How a village workshop became a school of art, and how that school trained an entire generation of furniture craftsmen.
A school, a community of craftspeople
Founded by Giuseppe Merlin at Asparetto between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the trade school turned a small village workshop into a recognized center for the art of cabinetmaking. Here, within a few generations, hundreds of young people — men and women — learned every stage of building fine furniture, giving rise to a class of craftspeople who were capable, self-sufficient, and able to withstand even the hardest years.
The right idea
The idea that drove Giuseppe Merlin was to spread and encourage the founding of a school for craftspeople that would safeguard and hold in trust the art his humble beginnings had been built on, and that could bring a better life to the other local craftsmen too.
The economy of the Verona plain in the late nineteenth century was almost entirely agricultural: great estates where people went hungry, laborers living for months on polenta alone and falling ill with scurvy, unhealthy land breeding disease and a very high rate of infant death. Against exploitation on the land, emigration seemed the only way out.
Crafting as a way out
In the early years of the twentieth century craft was raised into a revolutionary economic alternative to the lords of the land, who wanted to keep the population as farm labor. Giuseppe Merlin, artist and entrepreneur, was among the first to rebel against that condition, sensing that deepening his own trade would benefit not only his family but the whole district.
As soon as he could afford to, he humbly learned the techniques from the artists of the Brera Academy and the Cignaroli in Verona. He went to learn lacquering in Florence and Venice and sent his joiner pupils to the Venetian Patrician families and to specialist art shops. He frequented the Verona art shops to learn upholstery, gilding and carving.
Learning by observing
Giuseppe Merlin always taught his pupils starting from the originals he had to hand. If he could not have them, he would send one of his pupils on a mission, as far as Venice, to observe and learn from an original piece.
Paolo de Paoli, a master craftsman trained at his school, used to tell of the day it fell to him to cycle to Venice to study a patrician family’s bureau and fix it in his memory: a memorable day, dawn to dusk, meal paid for. The next morning Giuseppe Merlin already had the sketch for the new model in his hand.
He never tried to keep his techniques to himself: he encouraged anyone who wanted to learn a trade. Pupils came to Asparetto every day from Caselle, Bionde, Cerea, Bovolone, Bonavicina, Sanguinetto and many other villages.
An authority in the field
In 1920 many artists started working on their own, by opening their art shops. There were already fifteen, but it’s only after the war that fame started expanding consistently and the workload increased. Veronese antiquarians and then from all Italy, they started bringing furniture which needed to be restored and renewed.
His trading experience and his first-hand knowledge of models turned Giuseppe Merlin into a real authority on the furniture of earlier times. Already in the first years after the Great War, he was the best known and most respected expert in the whole Verona area.
An acknowledged school
In 1926 the Merlin School worked with the Government Commissioner for Crafts, and in 1930 it officially became the «Asparetto craft school of fine furniture», under the aegis of the Institute for Labour and the Ministry of Education.
Giuseppe Merlin was its director, alongside his sons Vasco and Remo, both Masters of the craft: they are captured, together with the other craftsmen, in the well-known photograph taken around 1930 in the Asparetto art shop-school, an image that has become a symbol of the fine-furniture craftsmen.
Drawing was taught, and the history of art, and above all the working of wood: the secrets that would produce masterpieces made to last. The output consisted of faithful copies of genuine pieces, but also of the outright invention of pieces in antique style, never made before and yet true to the canons of art history. The boost to the local economy was such that the street where the school stood was named Via Belle Arti, the name it still bears today.
Work that increases
In the 1930s the fame of this fine furniture has already spread everywhere: the work of the Asparetto craftsmen was sought across Italy, and the art shop-school could no longer keep up with demands and applications.
Giuseppe Merlin then had another great intuition: to train certain pupils in one stage of the work and, once they were ready, encouraged them to carry on at home, supplying raw material, a joiner’s bench and tools. It began with polishing, entrusted mainly to women, then marquetry, burl veneering, upholstery, and in time the building of whole parts of a piece. It was Remo Merlin who extended this network to Casale di Scodosia and Bassano del Grappa as well.
Success not welcomed by everyone
Not everyone welcomed the school’s success: the local landowners, who saw cheap labor drawn away from their fields, and some competitors from nearby villages tried to discredit it, calling the craftsmen ignorant and their work of poor artistic worth. But those who came to Asparetto knew perfectly that they were buying recent work, made with mastery.
In 1933 Giuseppe Merlin worked with the National Board for Crafts and Small Industry, and in 1934 the school won funding from the National Institute of Labor: his son Vasco became its director. In 1939 the Merlin firm presented its fine furniture at the New York World’s Fair: the craft art shop had become a genuine industry.
A legacy that resists war
During the war, the export business allowed many workers to stay on their benches rather than be called up. A dedicated «Course in restoration and marquetry» was set up for women, who took the place of the men called to arms, until Vasco Merlin too was conscripted.
By then, however, hundreds of pupils — men and women — had learned the art of building furniture. After the war they went back to work, giving rise to one of Italy’s largest centers of fine furniture production. Giuseppe Merlin had not merely founded a school: he had trained a self-sufficient class of craftspeople, skilled at every stage of the work.
Discover
our mission
Find out about the values that drive our work, between the warmth of what’s antique and the functionality of contemporary design.
Read moreDiscover
the trade school
How a small town’s art shop has shaped a whole generation of craftsmen in the fine furniture industry.
Read more