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KLMNO Sonswalk in cobblers’ footsteps BY ROCKY CASALE “Nothing struggles to grow
here,” said Manfreddo Gazzani of the verdant river valleys be- low Montegranaro, a medieval citadel of Le Marche, in east- central Italy. Cypress and olive trees grow in clumps on hill- tops. Vineyards grow in ter- raced rows on rolling hillsides. Soft patches of wheat carpet everything in between almost all the way down to the sea. And then there are the shoe
factories — nearly 200 of them and growing. They belong mostly to second- and third- generation cobblers and to somemegabrands, such asGuc- ci and Prada, that control most of Italy’s shoe industry. But among them is a scattering of cottage industries, or vestiges of what shoemaking in this area once looked like, such as Gaz- zani’s family-owned brand, Bontoni. A 60-year-old business, Bon-
toni is still making every shoe by hand. The family resisted the factory expansion and manu- facturing mechanization that occurred here between the 1970s and the ’90s, whichmany other local cobblers embraced, producing high volumes of foot- wear at a lower quality for new markets in Eastern Europe and the Americas. Some of themas- sive factories that sprang up, like the new Tod’s factory, bear an eerie resemblance to the rationalist architecture of fas- cist-era government buildings. All of them, surrounded by 25 miles of mountains and buff- ered by the Adriatic Sea, appear as industrialmirages, fenced in like protected monuments to the boom years of their indus- try.
Bontoni, however, “chose to
stay small,” said Gazzani. “We inherited this trade from our fathers and handed it down to our sons. Our shoes belong in museums.” In 2004, the bespoke shoe-
makers relocated their opera- tions to a small workshop high- er in the bosky hills. Amuseum inits ownright, theworkshop is in a low-ceilinged subterranean room in the home of Manfred- do’s son, Franco. Walk in the front door and a cocktail of odors clocks you in the face: Mildly acrid glues, chemical creams and pomades perfume the space. Supple pelts of white leather are draped over metal bars and sawhorses; wooden templates and thin paper proto- types of shoes pile up on desks or hang fromtacks on thewalls. A tray of old jamjars filled with inky eggplant, burnt ochre and whiskey-colored stains rests on a table where on a lower shelf sit small bowls of buckles and spools of waxy shoelace. There is an order to the cramped and cluttered workshop that only Bontoni’s team of five cobblers
will ever understand. Bontoni is one of the only
cobblers in Italy working with white leather. “These are blank canvases,” said Manfreddo. “You start working with leather that has already been colored and you end up with a boring sameness, an industrial output of the same shoe. This subtracts from the value and individuali- ty of the final product, and these aremeant to be showpiec- es for your feet.” Near the back of the work-
shop, by the buffing stations, white wingtips are lined up in rows on awheeled cart,waiting to be stained with colors and antique finishes. Caramel- stained brogues and mulberry lace-up boots await another an- tiquing treatment of patchy charcoal stain. It can take up to threeweeks to achieve a client’s desired coloring effect. This means that a bevy of shoes are always in various phases of production and coloring, keep- ing Bontoni’s workshop a charming jumble.
DETAILS
Bontoni Via Elpidiense Nord, 27 Montegranaro, Italy 011-39-335-495-282
www.bontoni.com Consultations and visits by appointment.
them together by hand to a leather lining.Before any of this, they make a mold of the client’s foot, around which the leather pieces are mounted and stretched in the way that paint- ers pull canvas over a frame. Coloring is discussed and ex- plained, as are the manifold phases of assembly, such as how thewelt is attached,where seals, gums and cork are applied, when a leather sole is ready to be mounted and a heel nailed into place. Dozens of even more minute
and plodding processes are not explained.And still, said Franco, clients leave the workshop and Montegranaro more informed about the difference between made-to-measure, handcrafted shoes, at starting prices of about $4,000, and the ready-to-wear models sold by corporate giants inmalls and boutiques. In short: Any shoe that takes six months to handcraft is superior to one machine-made in a day. The small office and show-
room off Bontoni’s workshop is filled with banks of buffed and finished shoes—crimson wedg- ies, pistachio green lace-ups and burnt sienna alligator loafers, to name but a fewof eight dozen or so styles. Black-and-white pho- tographs of long-dead family members hang on the walls. These aremen fromMontegran- aro, dressed in finely tailored
SIDEORDER
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2010
ALAN ROBERTS/ALAMY Ahumpback whale plays up to a boat in Stellwagen BankNationalMarine Sanctuary near Boston.
Braving rough seas pays off with a look at playful whales
BY NANCY TREJOS Cara Pekarcik, our Boston
Harbor Cruises tour guide, had warned us. “It will get quite windy out there,” she’d said over the loudspeaker. That was an understatement.
I’ddecided to sit at thebowof the catamaran taking us almost 20 miles outside Boston Harbor to search for whales, figuring that’s where I’d get the best view. But once the boat started picking up speed, I realizedmy mistake. It was a warm day, but out on
the water, the wind dominated. All I could think was:Whyhadn’t I worn socks? I struggled to put the sweater
CHRISTOPHER GILMORE
Each shoe is stained by hand, a process that can take three weeks. So serious are some men
about their footwear that they make a yearly pilgrimage to Montegranaro — some from as far away asHongKong orDubai —for a consultation. Clients get measured and hear about some of Bontoni’s hand-manufactur- ing processes before colors and styles are discussed. Franco Gazzani or his ap-
prentice, Roberto Ripia, ex- plains how they choose differ- ent leathers and control them for imperfections before cut- ting them, puncturing them with designs and stitching
jackets, high-waisted pants and, of course, brilliantly crafted shoes, strolling in lazy circles around the piazzas. Sit in this workshop for a
while, and you get a sense of Bontoni’s admiration for tradi- tional Italian handcrafts. And you might get an idea of the amazing skill these shoemakers have inherited, and of how they aspire to return men’s style to a better place, one shoe at a time.
travel@washpost.com
Casale is a freelance journalist based in London.
and rain jacket I’d shed at the start of the cruise back on. My dangling earrings were pummel- ing my face, so I took them off and threw them intomy purse. I finally gave up on the fantastic view and ducked inside the cab- in. By then, all the best tables by the windows had been taken. Annoyed at myself, I slunk into one of the auditorium-style chairs in the center of the cabin. But soon enough it became
clear that no one would be spared from the harshness of the water.We were rocking back and forth and hopping over waves. It felt like going over gigantic speed bumps, and we could see water splashing on the deck. A fewrows ahead of me, a teenager buried his head in his hands. A crew member was handing out barf bags. I could hear people gagging. “Motion sickness,” said a Ger-
mangirl sitting behindmeas she popped a pill. “Wake me when you see
whales,” replied her male friend. I got up when I spotted a seat
by a window but almost fell getting to it. It was worse than being in a plane during turbu- lence.
Finally, an hour and a half
later, we slowed down. We had arrived at the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, an 842-square-mile stretch of open water at the mouth ofMassachu- setts Bay. Pekarcik, a marine biologist
and teacher, started her lecture. The whales usually arrive from the Caribbean in late March to search for food, she said,andstay until October or November. They’ll only stay for as long as there’s food in the New England waters, and the waters are never manipulated. That is, marine bi- ologists don’t throw fish into the water for the whales. Pekarcik said she would let us
know where the whales were based on the hands of a clock. I wasnear 12o’clock, sitting beside a window and near a door, so I could easily run out if a whale appeared. Suddenly, Pekarcik’s voice
boomed over the loudspeaker. She had spotted something. We rushed out to the railing, but I didn’t see anything. Neither did anybody around me. “I promise you, I’ve seen
something,” Pekarcik assured us. “Patience is definitely a virtue when you’re out here watching whales.” So we waited. And waited.
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Then Pekarcik spotted anoth-
er whale, this one at 10 o’clock. A humpback whale had come up for a couple of breaths, she told us. Again, I’d missed it. There was no telling when he would return, she said, dashing our hopes (though we were prom- ised a credit for another cruise if we didn’t see anything on this one).
“Does anyone see anything?”
asked a middle-aged woman wearing a sweat shirt with the word Maine emblazoned across it.No one did. Then we heard Pekarcik
again. She had seen a whale breaching, or jumping out of the water. “That’s a rare behavior,” she said. I still didn’t see anything.
Pekarcik spotted another one. Go to the right, she instructed. I rushed over, joined by many oth- ers, and there it was, finally: A humpback whale in the midst of a leap. “Another breaching be- havior,” she said, as the whale performeda flip, for all the world like a gymnast. We stood transfixed for a
while, hoping that the creature would show up again. And it did. The boat kept turning to give
us a better view as we watched a total of four whales flipping around in pairs, delivering a fantasticshow.We’dall forgotten about the barf bags. Wewatched for about an hour,
sometimes seeing only the whales’ blowhole, other times their tails. But the wind was so biting thatmany of us eventually gave up and went back inside. I came upon Jordan and Joy
Oliver, who had traveled from Birmingham, Ala., to Boston for their anniversary trip. Joy, sick, had her head buried in Jordan’s shoulder. She was bemoaning not having seen the whales. Jor- dan, though trying to be sympa- thetic, was obviously pleased that his stomach had cooperated and that he had gotten to see them. “It’s everything people always
talk about,” he said. “You only see it onTV.This was worth the cold, And it was worth the ride.” “It’s all about luck out here,”
Pekarcik told me later. During the morning cruise, she said, she and her passengers had seen just one whale, a quarter of a mile away. “You picked the right cruise today,” she assured me. I couldn’t believemy luck.
trejosn@washpost.com
CRUISE.COM
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