Stefano Bertoli is a young violin maker based in Milan, where he has his own workshop together with three other young artisans. "I have always been a musician. But when I started at violin making school, gazing at the work of my teachers, I fell in love with the precision and the great attention to detail that is typical of craftsmanship," he explains of his transition from musician to craftsman. He focuses primarily on the construction of bowed instruments, whose models are both designed by him and taken from the great masters of the Italian violin making tradition. He also carries out restoration and repair of instruments, with a particular attention to their set-up and sound optimization. His instruments are entirely handcrafted and hand varnished.

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Lorenzo Rossi’s story began with sudden inspiration. At the time he was studying materials science at university and in his free time playing bass guitar in a punk band. It never crossed his mind to become a violin maker, but accompanying a friend to mend his guitar changed his life forever. “The following day I left university and enrolled in the Scuola Civica di Liuteria di Milano, the municipal violin making school. The smell of wood and the noises I heard in that workshop completely stunned me. As a teenager I had built the bass guitar I was playing on, but I never thought of becoming a luthier. At the beginning, my parents didn’t take it well, but I gave them the first violin I made, which they still guard as their most precious treasure.”

Rossi, Lorenzo

From punk guitarist to violin master

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As a young cabinet maker, Michele Sangineto moved to Northern Italy from Calabria. In Monza he began to teach cabinetry in the renowned Istituto d’Arte Nanni Valentini. His interest for musical instruments was sparked when he had to fix a wooden percussion. Now internationally celebrated, Michele’s work is unique: he’s specialised in traditional instruments, such as the Celtic and bardic harp, psalter, vielle, portative organ, tamburin de Béarn, rebec, gironda and other ones taken from Renaissance paintings. His organist viola from Leonardo’s Codex Atlanticus and the continuous wind stack from the Codex of Madrid are very famous. He collaborates with great musicians like Alan Stivell and Vincenzo Zitello.

Sangineto, Michele

The maker of sound

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Roberto Regazzi's foray into making stringed instruments began when he was 14 years old. More than 50 years later he still loves this job more than anything else. "Since I was a child, I've had a propensity for sound and timbre. I’ve always loved music," he says. He first started to repair his friends’ guitars, and soon after, began building them. Later, during an apprenticeship, he was told to switch to making violins. He quickly learnt that making a violin takes a long time. "It’s a matter of understanding what the client wants – perhaps a specific model, with a specific cut. Each instrument also requires a particular type of wood. Viola is often made of poplar; for the cello willow is very good; the violin mostly requires maple and spruce."

Regazzi, Roberto

Crafting wood in the service of music

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“A well made instrument should be easy to play and with a unique sound”. This is the professional maxim guiding the path of violin making for the founders of Marino Violins Christo and Eva Marino. They met in Bulgaria during the 1990s and joined forces to continue their luthier education at one of the best schools: The International School of Violin Making A. Stradivari in Cremona, Italy. They had the chance to meet some of the most influential violin players in the world there and ever since Cremona has become a home for them and their workshop. A real breakthrough moment came in 2010 when Bruno Giuranna, one of the legends of classical viola, fell in love with one of their violas and decided to buy it, despite the fact that up until then he had never owned or played on a new instrument.

Marino, Eva & Christo

The string instrument makers

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Developed in partnership with Fondazione Cologni dei Mestieri d’Arte and made possible by the support of Cartier, Homo Faber in Città gives you a rare chance to visit over 70 artisan workshops. The project is developed in collaboration with Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Confartigianato Imprese Venezia, CNA Venezia, Consorzio Promovetro Murano, The Venice Glass Week and Venezia da Vivere.

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Step inside the workshops and ateliers to learn the secrets of local master artisans and manufacturers

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Marvel at examples of fine craftsmanship by doing our itineraries

This september, the second edition of Homo Faber in Città invites visitors to step off the beaten track and discover the artisanal addresses where Venetian craftspeople create objects of exquisite beauty. A rare opportunity to witness Venice’s master artisans and young talents demonstrating their crafts and presenting the tools, materials and skills involved in contemporary Venetian craftsmanship.

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Homo Faber Guide is an online portal dedicated to contemporary craftsmanship, showcasing artisans, ateliers, museums, galleries, shops and experiences. Create your user account for access to exclusive features on Homo Faber Guide: save your preferred pages, hear about hot topics first, leave recommendations for your favourite artisans and much more.

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Although the Michelangelo Foundation researches the talents for its projects autonomously, collaboration with our ambassadors is fundamental. Over 120 associations, schools and institutions allow us to map the continents for craftsmanship and to have partners in each country who share our vision and goals. In addition, we have asked well-known personalities in the craft, design and art world to be our ambassadors in the cities where they live, so that their recommendations can offer a unique insight into craftsmanship in the major cities of Europe and beyond.

Who are our ambassadors?

Download our free Homo Faber Guide app (iOS and Android) to discover artisans, museums, galleries, shops, and experiences by location. Search Homo Faber on the App store on your mobile device.

Find craftsmanship destinations on the go

Discover the addresses of esteemed manufacturers, well known for producing high quality objects across a wide variety of crafts. Read their stories and find out where you can shop their contemporary pieces, see their archive collections and even in some cases visit their workshops. Find exceptional ateliers where artisans collaborate creatively to create fine pieces of craftsmanship. Reach out to them to commission something special.

Ateliers & Manufacturers

All the artisans and small workshops featured in Homo Faber Guide have been carefully researched and selected. They are presented and narrated through a selection of images and an interview, which allows readers to immerse themselves in the universe of these makers who exemplify excellence in their individual fields or are promising talents of the future. Find masters and rising stars who share the same passion and determination, and whose workshops are ready to share their secrets with visitors.

A selection of the best artisans

Are you eager to discover a city through craftsmanship? Do you wish to spend a few hours visiting an applied arts museum or attending a course on a craft with one of the masters featured in Homo Faber Guide? Browse the section dedicated to experiences and find your next adventure.

Experiences

An expert artisan is an accomplished artisan who has been in activity for more than ten years. He or she may also be engaged in passing on their knowledge to the next generations, but they have been doing so for less than seven years. Beyond this, they will become a Master artisan.

Who is an Expert artisan?

Homo Faber Guide provides you with a selection of the best addresses across Europe and further afield, where you will be able to discover and purchase exceptional objects, some of which are created by artisans featured in Homo Faber Guide.

Galleries

Homo Faber Guide is an online platform dedicated to craftsmanship that allows you to discover artisans and their masterpieces; explore museums, visit galleries and shops selling unique objects; enjoy experiences in cities across Europe and beyond.

Homo Faber Guide is a signature project developed by the Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship, an international non-profit organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland, which was set up in 2016 thanks to the intuition of Franco Cologni and Johann Rupert. The Michelangelo Foundation’s mission is to celebrate and preserve master craftsmanship, and for this reason it has created a map of the most significant representatives in this field, with the aim of connecting all its protagonists: artisans, designers, gallery owners, art curators, collectors and enthusiasts of high-quality handmade pieces.

About the Guide

Are you an artisan, atelier or manufacturer? Would you like to be featured in Homo Faber Guide? The Michelangelo Foundation encourages self-assessment initiatives and is pleased to evaluate new members to appear on the Guide or in other projects. Thanks to the Master’s Touch Evaluation Tool, every artisan can send their application: register and access a questionnaire to see if you fulfill the 11 criteria for excellence that stand behind all the activities of the Michelangelo Foundation. If your answers reach the minimum requirement, your application will be brought to our attention; if, on the contrary, you should score below the minimum requirement, we will give you some points for improvement, in the hope that you may participate in future initiatives of the Michelangelo Foundation.

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Our artisan labels

A master artisan is an accomplished artisan who has been in activity for more than ten years, and who has also been engaged in passing on his or her expertise to the younger generations for more than seven years. This is in keeping with one of the key values of the Michelangelo Foundation: the transmission of knowledge in craftsmanship.

Who is a Master artisan?

Find museums handpicked for their links to contemporary craftsmanship and the exquisite collections they have on display. In each city, discover a museum of interest and organise your visit. From Italian museums displaying coral collections, glass pieces and ceramics to decorative art museums in Russia and Greece, marvel at the variety of museums exhibiting masterpieces, showcasing techniques and recounting histories.

Museums

A rising star is an artisan who has been active for less than ten years, and who is capable of expressing his or her craft with competence, creativity and originality. Whether self-taught or trained, the rising star represents the future of craftsmanship, in creativity, concerns and approaches.

Who is a Rising star?

The artisans featured in Homo Faber Guide have been selected through a meticulous assessment process based on the 11 criteria for excellence, identified by Alberto Cavalli, Executive Director of the Michelangelo Foundation, in the volume The Master’s Touch, written with researchers Giuditta Comerci and Giovanna Marchello. The members of the Michelangelo Foundation’s network who have been invited to participate in sourcing artisans for the Guide use an evaluation tool based on these criteria. In this way, they can identify the most suitable artisans to include in the project.

Simple rules for a transparent selection

In which city does the artisan work?

In which country does the artisan practise?

What craft does the artisan practise?

What is the artisan’s Instagram page?

What is the name of the artisan you are recommending?

Does the artisan have a website?

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