On the Aisle

Artists in Cortina, from a Sculptor to a Chef in His 'Fogher'

by Claudia Cassidy

(Di passaggio - Artisti a Cortina, da uno Scultore ad uno Chef nel suo 'Fogher')

Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy - Somber clouds veil the Dolomites, and the hotel keepers cry woe. We walk down to the village with our hosts, the Raglands of Chicago, raincoats in hand, to make the old stops and add some that are new. Call on Mme. Rosa, good as bread and as full of susprises as a cake at a child's party, whose tiny shop is a lure of handmade treasures. She says the material of a doeskin soft bag is known as "devil's skin", which alarms me. I'hadn't known he was quite such a suave character. Stop at the postoffice the remind the master-Alpinist postmaster, Beppe Digrigorio, that he is coming to dinner, preferably full of the tail tales he has put in a book. Move on to where a ceramic sign says "Toni Furlan - Scultore" and enter.

Furlan is a compact, dark young man with two faces, one to meet the world with, and one to show his work when he moves it. I see that hidden face when, leafing thru a book of photograph, I am unable to get past the twin panels of an "Annunciation" as gentle, tender, and young as the first signs of spring. It enriches a nearby villa, and it makes me think of Della Robbia at La Verna, which the young monk saluted so quietly as "formidable". When he sees how I feel about it, a light goes on in Furlan's eyes. He says, just as quietly "With that I am satisfied".

Of the masters he most admires Donatello, and he would by choice concentrate on big works in marble and bronze. "But I could not live on that," he says, "not a man with a wife and three small children." So his small shop and the workshop behind it are filled with charming things to buy, and Cortina's hotels are proud of his ceramic decorations. Increasingly so now that some of that adorn the Cristoforo Colombo, having won the contest open to all Italian artists. The Ford collection has anticipated the seafaring Cristopher in introducing Furlan's work to America - still, it stands to reason that his ceramic fronting the bar in the salon are going to be seen by a lot of Americans.

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