Paola Mocchi

Decocalchi

Plaster and stucco worker

©Gastone Bianchi

©Paola Mocchi

©Pablo Molano

©Florent Lestienne

In the footsteps of the Habsburg master decorators

Paola is a decorator specialised in moulding
She has a varied background in historical research and decorative art
Her specialisation is known by very few

In Trieste, Paola Mocchi carries on the craft of decorator and specialises in moulding. Paola has an extensive and varied artistic and professional background: it began with painting, continued in Paris, where she studied scenography first and then decorative arts at ENSAD, worked at the Rosini and Clementi foundries, before joining the Carpenters Workshop Gallery for five years and the Atelier d'Art of the French National Museums. In 2021 she returned to Trieste and opened her own business. For Paola, art has always been a "tool for reading and understanding" the world and herself. It was in the ENSAD sculpture workshops that she discovered casts, and came to understand her "destination." Her encounter with Peppino Rosini was crucial to her journey, as it is thanks to him that she found out that craftsmanship fascinates her “much more than pure creation.”

Interview

©Pablo Molano

©Paola Mocchi

How is your work linked to the land?: I always refer back to how the master builders of the Habsburg Empire worked. I study to understand how the casts were made in the mid-1800s, in a natural cement that came from Vienna, from quarries that were later closed.
How do you reconcile tradition and innovation in your work?: Innovation passes through the rediscovery of tradition. I do a lot of research in the city's historical archives, I check the compatibility with the historical materials on which I work. I do not use 3D digital printers.
What do you like most about what you do?: The fact that with my hands I build a real working tool, the mould, which must be very precise. I go up to the construction site with a silicone bucket, catalyst, balance, plaster, wooden strips and go down with the cast to reproduce the artwork.
What is something that is little known about your work?: First of all that it exists: the creation of decorative elements through the moulding of moulds is not well known. Then, how much study is behind it. I am aware of being at the service of the city's beauty and heritage, working on facades and I feel a moral obligation to pass on accurate knowledge.

Paola Mocchi is an expert artisan: she began her career in 2008