Bespoke furniture - Dario Biagioni - Florence

Patina Style

  

       

PATINA STYLE is a page that couldn't miss on my website.

 

During the years, I realized that the peculiarities of works are due to a set of combinations, which are not only woodworking and colour, but a unity, conveying feelings.

 

I acknowledge in the ageing process and in the patina a value equal to woodworking. In 1991, during my stay in Sweden, I got to know the oil marblings, which are still used today in the Scandinavian countries. In Italy, they were used during the XVIII century: they used to imitate the veins of hardwood, such as oak, larch, rosewood on poorer woods such as poplar.

 

 

During the 90s, I gathered information material on the matter of colours as well as of their applications. I experimented the use of natural temperas such as egg yolks, caseins, starches, animal glues, etc.

 

 

I used to grind the pigments in the mortar and then combine them with the various natural glues. I tried so many times... sometimes the paint used to scrape off or it was not concealing enough. Since I could not use white lead any longer, as it was recognized as being harmful to health, but efficient in painting, sometimes I used to try to use other compounds, such as lithopone or zinc white.

 

 

I was forgetting a very important passage: the starchings, that is the first coating on rough wood, what we call today priming: all these are made up of plasters and animal and plant glues. According to the use, you decide the most suitable glue. For instance: in ancient times, there were no paintings which resisted to weather agents, so, in particular, water was the worst enemy of paintings, but plaster mixed with casein diluted with ammonia and adding a small quantity of oil was the equivalent of our paint for outdoors. Many historical ceilings, even in churches, were treated in ways similar to this.

 

  

 

 

No manual ever talked about patinas, of ageing techniques, other than those with tar, which are, in my opinion, aesthetically not that much appealing.

 

    

Therefore, I started to introduce myself in some workshops in Florence, but with a negative outcome. I didn't manage to discover anything, but maybe I understood one thing that I can reveal today: I never saw anything in these workshops that was created by using modern chemistry, not even the shadow of it, so the secret is in the craftiness of the hands and in the use of poor materials within everyone's reach.

 

I do not claim to disguise the new with the antique and not even my instinct leads me to do this. PATINA STYLE intends to be a key, into which most of my work experience, and not only, merges.

 

   

       

During one of my trips in Provence, I realized how we, Tuscan people, are not aware of ourselves, as the human eye does not have the possibility to see itself, if not through the reflection of a mirror.

 

Today, I can express the following remark as relating to the French artisans of the Provence region, who, I acknowledge it, are very good at appraising any piece of furniture by using the colour enriched as if it was a set and embellished by thousands of knick-knacks (brocante), but maybe uninterested by a manual perfection, typical of Tuscan craftsmanship, which often arises only from the inside of things and it shows, for example, in a well-done joint, respecting its precise rules, set by a serious and meticulous way of building.

 

I like to acknowledge the value of my Tuscan tradition, which, down the centuries, has appraised its own craftsmanship all over the world, aiming to the research of what is beautiful, but with the awareness of producing, which does not finish when the work is over, but spreads out in time, thus revealing its own message of humanity, something that in the age of industrialization is disappearing increasingly more.

 

 

PATINA STYLE represents not only the Provencal or country piece of furniture, but closes a status, a point of view, and for me, this means a lot of things, it has a symbolic relation with my life experience.

 

   

   

    

    

   

The secret of professions is connected to the intimacy of one's own soul and may disclose itself only by means of the love in what we do as reflection of one's deepest self.

 

   

     

 

       

    

      

     

         

I will mention a few books that I have been of help over the years:

• Coloritura verniciatura e laccatura del legno - A.Turco - ed. Hoepli 1985
• Doratore laccatore decoratore - ricettario moderno - L.Valerio - ed. Hoepli
• Il gesso: lavorazione, trasformazione e impieghi - T.Turco - ed. Hoepli 1990
• Falegname ed ebanista - G.Belluomini -T.A.Turco - ed. Hoepli 1952
• L’arte del restauro. Il restauro dei dipinti nel sistema antico e moderno - a cura di Gino Piva - ed. Hoepli 1984
• Il doratore - T.Turco - ed. Hoepli 1987
• Antiche ricette di pittura murale - Accademia G.B.Cignaroli di Pittura e Scultura e Scuola Brenzoni. Verona ed. Cierre 1984
• Il falegname. L‘arte nei mestieri - Isidoro Andreani - ed. Hoepli 1935
• Colori vernici e loro principali applicazioni - dott.P.Bonomi da Monte - M.Meyer - A.Miatello - ed. Hoepli 1926
• Decorative painting of the wood - World living arts 1993
• Dipingere la casa - Annie Sloan, Kate Gwynn - ed. Zanichelli 1998
• Pitture tradizionali - Annie Sloan, Kate Gwynn - ed. Zanichelli 1994
• ABC des couleurs - Jacques Grancher - Editeur Paris 1987
• I colori per la casa - Stephanie Hoppen - ed. Logos 2010
• Enciclopedia degli schemi di colore - Anna Starmer - ed. Il castello 2005

 

 

©2009 Falegnameria Dario Biagioni - Patina Style: realization and recovery Provençal style furniture
Via Olmi Montazzi, 35 - 50032 Borgo San Lorenzo - Firenze - Cell. 328 0725925 - Mail: [email protected]

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