Updates from the studio in Santa Fiora

The physical studio itself has gone from this crowded and dim space in the apartment [a.k.a. The Garret]

What a messy person.

to this gloriously light-filled space, which I’ll be sharing with a couple of other lives creative, including Monika.

Lots and lots of LED lights

Please ignore the horrible sink. Aside from being the colour of old ladies’ nylon tights, it just plain looks like a bidet made love to the brown end of the 70s.

Fire & Water
There follows the last fiddly touches to the studio, however: water connection and heating [a.k.a. bureaucratic ballet]. As you can see from the photos I have a wood heater. It’s all connected, works like a dream, but some smart cookie in the apartment above has, in the distant past, installed a water heater where the chimney space is, rustic-like. We lit the fire and the apartment above filled with smoke, and the window above filled with a cranky face… So for the past two months we have been chasing up the landlord and the tenants told us they’d be out on 1 March…but, remember: this is Italy. Almost a month on and the tenants are still up there, gnashing their teeth at us from on high.
As for the water, we organised [and paid through the nose] for connection, and now we wait, toilet-less and schlepping water in buckets from the fountain in the piazza, and schlepping full bladders across town.

Behold! The glorious toilet we can’t use…yet.

But we’re in!
It’s a mess and tomorrow I’ve dedicated to cleaning, sorting and shuffling tables around with the idea that I’ll be back at the bench by Friday. I’m not sure how I’ll go with this floor.

If you remember from this post the room was used for storage of everything from ancient wine to 9 1/2 Weeks on VHS, and had been left open for homeless cats for about 20 years.

Giovanni, who repainted and refitted windows, tiles, toilet and that god-awfully designed sink had a go at it and it’s stumped him. It may need something horrendously acidic – I’d rather not. It being a studio, I think I’ll not be that precious about the floor.

And finally…On the Work Front

I’ve been off kilter with the blog schedule as, aside from moving, I’ve been fortunate to have landed a large order from Australia for pendants, which will most likely be ongoing. A few other shiny jobs to keep the furnace ticking over and warm this little silversmith’s cockles.

 

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A Presto,

Cheers and Ciao,

Ali 🙂

Image Alison Matteini ©