The Workshop
When I was a child, I lived near a shoemaker's shop.
It was a small place with a dim light inside, but it fascinated me.
In the afternoons, when my homework was done, if I wasn't meeting up with my playmates, I went into the shoemaker's shop.
Mario was the name of the shoemaker and he sat on a wooden stool with the leather padded cushioning seat.
He worked folded over himself using his tools, which were all placed "disorderly in order" on small shelves behind him. Only Mario knew how to find them.
A feeble light, from a lamp above him, was focused on that section of surface containing his manual skills.
His rough and calloused hands took the shoes, fold the material, used the tools with the care and mastery only a skilled craftsman can express.
And then he had to repair the broken shoes: place small nails called "bollette", "masticiare" meaning spreading glue on the sole, covering a scratch with the colors, repairing a heel or a buckle, to resole the shoe.
And all these operations were easily done, indeed with grace and naturalness.
He rarely looked up and when somebody entered the shop, he recognized by looking at them from the knees down.
He was happy to talk to everyone, but he did it using only the half of his mouth; the other half was used to keep the "bollette".
The Smell.
In such a tiny place, with so dim light, full of tools and shoes to be repaired or already repaired, there was an element fascinating me: it was the magic of the smell.
For a child like me it was a kind of smell which I could feel in that small place.
A smell made up of many different kinds.
The leather of the soles had its own smell, as well as the leather of the shoes, the glue, but also the wooden and metal tools emitted their own smell.
And so in this mix of smells the small and dark shoemaker's shop fascinated me in some ways. It drew me in and attracted me.
Is it possible to "remember a smell", an olfactory sense?
Yes, even today, after so many years, I seem to remember it; printed in my sense memory.
And today, upon observing people making an UPGRAPE accessory, I see Mario again, my shoemaker friend.
Yes, because these people, who don't work in a tiny and dark place, use their hands with the same grace and naturalness.
It's true, I don't feel that same mix of smells, but I see again the grace and naturalness of the hands.
It looks like Mario handed down his "manual knowledge".
Today the smell I feel is the smell of new emotions.
The smell coming out from our product, a wallet or a document holder or a keyholder, is not simply the smell of the material but the smell of craftsmanship, of sustainable work, the smell of a product finding its dimension in the luxury of naturalness.
UPGRAPE is this too: getting involved with the smell of an emotion.
#Lead the Choice
ph: ©Monia Marchionni ig: @monia_marchionni