Mestieri d’arte e Made in Italy Giacimenti culturali da riscoprire

(Artistic Crafts Professions and Made in Italy Cultural Resources to Discover)

edited by Paolo Colombo with Alberto Cavalli and Gioachino Lanotte

publication produced by Fondazione Cologni dei Mestieri d'Arte

with a contribution from RobilantAssociati

What are the connections between Made in Italy, a factor that is becoming increasingly more crucial to identify special qualities in an economic and manufacturing system highly conditioned by globalisation and its Artistic Crafts Professions worthy of excellence? What role does the logic of the art profession play in defining an “Italian” style that is identified world over with beauty, elegance and the prestige of a tradition that cannot be imitated? An essential, inevitable reference point of this volume, produced by the Centro di ricerca “Arti e mestieri”, a research centre directed by Paolo Colombo at the Università Cattolica in Milan, is an attempt to investigate the theoretical premises of the centrality of Artistic Crafts Professions in the contemporary Italian manufacturing milieu, and to show how and to what extent mestiere d'arte still means culture and  know-how in Italy.

From the particularly rich, complex and variegated milieu of Italy’s artistic craftsmanship, this research aims to highlight careers that can still respond to precise criteria of indisputable aesthetic and manufacturing excellence, and that play a powerful role in the context of the economics professionalism and “Italian Quality” in the world. Each of the book’s twenty-four chapters is dedicated to a field of “excellence” in Italian manufacturing, and they show how the force of authentic “made in Italy” goods also passes through the activity of art professionals, maestri d'arte, who by nature cannot be exported because they are rooted in the territory where they work and constitute the conditions for an itinerary of research and development, from the laboratory to the “workshop” to the firm.

The research centre “Arti e mestieri” was founded in 1997 at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan thanks to an agreement with the Fondazione Cologni. Its purpose is to promote knowledge of the arts and Artistic Crafts Professions in their contemporary and historical aspects. It is particularly attentive to the role that the arts and Artistic Crafts Professions play in political-institutional, legal, economic and socio-cultural systems in Italy and Europe.

Paolo Colombo, director of the Centre and research coordinator, is regular Professor of the History of Institutions at the Faculty of Political Sciences at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. Among his publications: Il re d'Italia. Prerogative costituzionali e potere politico della Corona (1848-1922), published by Franco Angeli, 1999, and Governo (Il Mulino, 2003).

The volume is avaible in the best bookshops and at marsilioeditori.it

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