Craftsmen of Valenza Glow With Golden Hue
The golden hue reflected throughout this town is because of its 800 small workshops, in which goldsmiths mold, sculpt, cast and polish the metal.
Artisans buy their gold by the gram in thin, shiny sheets, pressed and cut in neat rectangles and squares or rolled into thin rods.
A dull yellow at the outset, each piece usually is worked on by a small team of craftsmen. One goldsmith cuts the basic segments while another sets stones. A third files the piece smooth before burnishing.
The finished hand-hewn necklaces, bracelets, rings and earrings are unrivaled by anything produced by machine. Valenza is renowned for its workmanship, and the objects made here are sold to some of the world’s most prestigious jewelers, including Cartier, Van Cleef and Arpels and Tiffany.
Cartier Sends Designers
Some companies, such as Cartier, send designers to work with Valenzan artisans, many of whom continue the artistic traditions of their elders.
“My great-grandfather began to sell early in the 20th Century,” says Maria Cada, whose family store, Pasetti Flora, is one of a dozen shops showcasing the goldsmiths’ work.
Most of Valenza’s jewelry shops are crowded and informal and somewhat short on decorative frills. But civility is stressed in Italy’s smaller towns, so residents may walk a stranger to a destination, and sales clerks often offer customers an early evening espresso or aperitif from a neighborhood cafe.
On Pasetti Flora’s long black counter two scales calibrated to weigh small quantities are set alongside a pair of calculators. All the jewelry, though, is sealed in a large double-doored safe, where it’s carefully rolled in scores of soft cotton wrappers.
Large Gold Chains
Cada removed a group of necklaces, noting that her mother sold many of the same styles more than 30 years ago. The large, hollow gold chains seen this season in Rome and Milan also were popular in the 1950s and show the ancient Greek and Roman influences to which Italian design remains so tied.
Like the stores, most gold workshops are small, and, by and large, family-run. Scattered among the alleys and courtyards, some craft only gold, while others specialize in setting jewels into near-finished pieces.
“The difference is in the work,” said Mario Diarena, president of the jewelers’ association. In Italy’s other gold centers, the work is manufactured almost exclusively by machine.
Almost any machine can churn out more miles of gold chain in a single hour than an artisan would attempt to forge in a year. But Valenza’s goldsmiths nonetheless use 20 tons of pure gold annually, enough for several million necklaces.
Valenza’s dominant industry dates back slightly more than a century, and probably originated with territorial in-fighting. Poised on a hill between two provinces and near the Po River, Valenza became a natural fortress. Tradespeople made the metal products that armies inevitably demanded, and when the military left, the craft remained.
Master’s Art
In 1848 the first goldsmith’s workshop, or oreficeria , opened. An apprentice refined his master’s art and soon established competition.
Now more than a third of Valenza’s 24,000 citizens work gold for a living. Italians from other towns come to Valenza to shop because the selection is vast and the prices are less. Stores welcome tourists and often employ English-speaking clerks.
But the workshops are generally closed to the public. Having too many visitors interrupts the workday, particularly in spaces that offer little extra room to begin with. An unspoken but more worrisome concern is the potential for robbery.
Inside an oreficeria specializing in jeweled handwork, Stefano Veritas strung a necklace of smoky amber topaz and onyx beads. Because the topaz pendant was more than two inches long the necklace, when finished, will wholesale for about $15,000.
Veritas, who learned his craft making religious pieces, noted that the wealthy are wearing smaller stones than before. American customers are increasingly wary about showing expensive pieces in public, he said, especially in cities.
But throughout Italy, gold continues to be given as gifts on even the slightest holidays, and most women, and many men, aspire to personal collections.
“In Rome and Sicily, people buy gold for investment,” said Patricia Braggione, who designs for her family’s store, 18KT. “But in the north they’re looking for workmanship. They want the piece nobody else has.”
Priced by Weight
In Valenza almost all gold is priced by weight alone, and even intricately hand-worked items sell for $4 to $12 a gram above the daily market price for bullion.
On the other hand, stores elsewhere generally price by the finished piece, and the cost may be 30% higher than in Valenza. The same jewelry in the United States is typically at least twice as expensive.
Handmade bracelets start at $250 in Valenza and necklaces begin at $350. Pieces set with stones are priced according to the gems’ quality; savings over American prices for such pieces are similar. Machine-made work, which some stores also carry, costs less.
Discounts on specific handmade items can be formidable. One shop, which works closely with a Cartier designer, sells an unsigned version of a discontinued Cartier collar, bracelet and earring set in distinctive bands of rose, white and yellow gold. Without the Cartier signature the necklace was 2.5 million lire, about $1,500. In the Cartier store in Beverly Hills the signed necklace was more than $6,900.
Yet some items can be surprisingly costly because of the time it takes to produce them. A heavy hammered bracelet, patterned with thousands of precise mallet strokes, requires about 45 days to complete, and its 85 grams cost about $3,600. By contrast, a machine-made bracelet of the same weight would cost $900.
Best Position
Most machine-made pieces, though, are not that heavy. Bracelets can cost $75 or less and necklaces less than $150. Chains are less expensive.
Those who make the jewelry are in the best position to choose. Celia Emmanuelle, a 17-year-old apprentice in an oreficeria , already owns five rings and several bracelets and necklaces, although she doesn’t wear them to work.
“But if I make something I really like,” she said, “I buy it.”
These retail stores represent most of the town’s oreficeria . These shops also produce some of their own work and accept custom orders.
In most stores someone speaks some English, but in the workshops be prepared to speak Italian or hire someone who will. (Most Italian shops close for at least part of August.)
All American travelers can take home $400 worth of purchases tax-free. Beyond that, duty amounts to about 10% of the purchase price.
Pasetti Flora, Via Mazzini 34, specializes in handmade work, including the large hollow chains. Some English is spoken. 18KT, Via Mazzini 26, carries a wide and unusual selection of contemporary and classic pieces. This store also makes an unsigned Cartier design at a significant discount from the original. English is spoken.
L. Soggia, Viale della Republica 21, is primarily a retail outlet for the Soggia workshop. As a result, prices are as much as 20% lower than in most other shops.
Bankorafa, Via Lega Lombarda 15, carries a wide selection of necklaces and some men’s accessories. Some items are machine-made. Santangelo, Corso Garibaldi 75, is recommended by Valenzans for its extensive selection of machine-made chains and its low prices. Credit cards accepted.
Valenza is 110 kilometers, about 70 miles, from Milan. Trains leave Milan’s Porta Genoa station several times daily. Travel takes an hour, and the round-trip fare costs about $8. Frequent bus service in town ferries passengers from the train station to the center of town and the shops.
For more information contact the Italian Government Travel Office, 360 Post St., Suite 801, San Francisco 94108.
