Hi. This is Materially Speaking, where artists tell their stories through the materials they choose. We're 30 miles north of Pisa and 15 miles south of the marble mountains of Carrara, near a town called Pietrasanta , nicknamed Little Athens because of its tradition for carving marble. Today, I'm talking to Christian Lange, sculptor and artisan who realizes work for artists. He also runs sculpting workshops, and whenever I cross his path, he seems to have at least 2 apprentices at his side lapping up his knowledge.
We meet at his studio, cooperativa on the edge of Pietrasanta , which has shelves of historical gessos up its walls. Outside, marble chunks are waiting to be claimed and opposite, 2 men with a block of marble suspended between them on a hoist are measuring carefully to see if the model they want to carve will fit inside the block of marble. I watch them argue while Christian answers his students' questions and checks they have enough to do before we leave for lunch. He waves an air blower over his body to remove the dust, and away we go. We're talking at the Croce verde, which is an ARCI, a workers' association where members can buy a simple but inexpensive meal.
Trestle tables fill a small outside area shaded with trees. As usual, we find the same familiar faces of other artists and greet them. There's a lot of table hopping.
My name is Christian Lange . I was born in Germany in a small village close to Frankfurt. And then after my school, I moved first to Frankfurt for making my civil service and then further south to Freiburg where I've made my apprenticeship as a stonemason at the, Munsterbauer, which is a fabric dedicated only for the restoration of the very beautiful gothic cathedral of Freiburg in southern Germany.
And why did you start in stone?
Everybody was asking me why, what will I study and after my high school grades, and I really didn't know what to study. I had a lot of joy already before to do something with my hands. It was not clear if it's really stone, but it was clear that I will do some artisans, some craft, and not so much brain work.
Does it come from your family?
My father was a teacher, my mother was a secretary, so not really. No. Maybe it comes, but as a reaction to the fact that there was no tool in my house. The only tool, we had a pair of old pliers. And whenever I want to fix my little motorbike or whatever, I had to go to my friends and they were all super equipped. So I got a little bit this idea. Oh, okay. It's not only about what you know to do with your hands. It's sort of a little bit about technique, about tools.
Can you tell me a bit about the restoration work you did?
It was mainly in sandstone. It was actually only in sandstone because these churches is made in sandstone, We apprentice, so the apprenticeship was 3 years where we worked only by hand, so no pressure, no electric power tools, no air pressure, everything with really very old fashioned hand tools, slow. But for learning, I still believe that learning something slowly, you learn it probably better. So it was a very good apprenticeship that I've had. So I had another year as a professional stone carver there, and then I left to Italy.
And what brought you to Italy?
A possibility, like many times in in life. A possibility to get a a place, from another artist who wanted to leave, and he wanted to hand that place over. It was a lovely old fattoria not far from here, 15 kilometers in Stiava, where I could just stay and and carve my own things. So because, that's what I wanted to try to to make my own art.
And how long did you do that?
I moved in '95 to Italy. I've but I tried more or less for a year to make my own art. I've known my wife very quickly. I've got a child very quickly. It's the first of 3.
So that brought me a little bit back into my my former profession as a stone carver, as a stone mason, as a craftsman. It was a little bit of decision. Do would you like to try to continue to make to be an artist, or do you wanna be an artisan and just try to develop this as much as you can, obviously? And the second one was just more intelligent.
And then after that?
I bought a house because the family was growing. The business was fine. I made good money here in Italy as a stone carver, freelance, helping wherever there was there was one needed in the companies. There were much more companies now more than 20 years ago and not so many workers anymore, so I was lucky.
And what sort of work were they doing? Were they doing art or restoration or church work? What was the... 20 years ago?
Quite a lot of architecture, but most mostly private buildings. Italy doesn't restore in the same way churches or important buildings like we might do in Germany or much less because they have so much of it. And they cannot afford to replace things, so they just try to maintain what they have. Private, yes, but private all over the world because, you know, Pietrasanta is a place where they where the companies are working not only for Italy, but for all over the place. Sometimes I didn't even know where my pieces will go.
I got a bit more into ornament works, so fireplaces, also some English, Victorian style. They are all over the the world, these pieces, and I don't know where they are.
So, am I right in thinking you're now at this point, you you would call yourself an artisan. Is that right? You said there was a distinction that
Yes. Yeah. With the difference, obviously, that an artist is, supposed to create from the idea the entire piece. I'm stepping in when the artist has, for example, only the idea, and I help him or I 100% realize from an idea, from a drawing, from a model, a maquette, or from a one to one sculpture, copying it, the marble piece. Or not only marble, but also granite or other styles.
How does the communication process work? Is it, can I text you a photo? Or how do you like to work?
Since WhatsApp it's changing. It's good to be together with the artist, to talk personally with him or her about the piece, it's very important that both would be fantastic, that both know that the piece is important thing here, not not him or her or me. No. I'm just in the best case, I'm just a tool. Very complicated tool sometimes, but sophisticated if you want so.
I think so.
But, it's lovely if an artist knows what he did. To use me just okay, Christian. This is what you're gonna do here. I know okay. Try try this. Try that. If if he gives me input because he knows stone, he knows the material, he knows actually, he would know to do it by himself or by herself, but doesn't have the time, for example, or not the power because is too old.
Well, that's interesting. Yes. Old age does take that power away. So what sort of challenges have you had with artists who perhaps don't understand what can and can't be done with stone? How does that go if an artist asks you to do something that's probably not possible?
Yeah. It happens almost all the time. Just already the choice of the marble gets very difficult because people think they see one piece of marble, and they wanna have it maybe exactly like this. But even if I know where the quarry is, I know exactly the stone, but the stone will be different because nature always invent something new. And even the same quarry doesn't give the same quality of stone, one day after another.
So many people doesn't know how complicated it it is to find the right material and the right size even you think every the whole Versilia is full with marble, but be sure that you never find the piece you need!
And I guess also all the marbles behave behave differently or all the different stones behave differently because you don't need to use local marble. Am I right? Because of the infrastructure here, there's access to an awful lot of choice?
Local marble is already so rich of different possibilities. We, I think we use 90% local marble with more than 80 quarries working. For sculpture, maybe only 10 are really interesting, 10, 20 maximum. They are all, it's all lovely material compared to other materials that come from from all over the the world, and we we work everything here.
It is also an important marketplace, So we we have access to any material rather here than anywhere else in the world. Most of the artists, and I can understand that, like, a homogeneous white nice white, and then the quarries are getting really few.
So the other quarries are supplying what kitchens and industrial use?
Yeah. You know, I think 99.9% of the marble goes into other uses. We are really, really small fishes here for the marble industry.
So would you help a client you'd go out and help them choose the marble, or you'd point them to an expert to choose a bit of marble?
Normally, I get the the commission to do it. It's lovely if I can choose it together with the with the client, also for sharing a little bit of responsibility of what we have chosen. Because it it's many times that we begin, I think it's right. It's the right stone and something coming it's coming up or just he changed or she changed their mind and oh, no. I don't like that actually. And then, it's if you started already and you've bought the stone and there's a lot of damage, there can be a lot of damage.
And then so you start the piece, and, how does the consultation go from there with the artist?
How how goes?
How does the consultation how do you do you meet with them, chat with them weekly, daily, monthly?
Our, best is, just at the beginning and and at the end when the no. I'm joking. I send pictures if the artist is not here or the artist comes by every now and then. Some artists come quite a lot every day, but it's really a personal thing. And it depends a bit on the, complexity, you say, of of the piece, obviously.
And do you have a preference for what kind of work you do, figurative, abstract?
I would love to do more figurative work. Also, because of the thing that challenged me more, there is just not so much around. It's more more expensive. It takes much more time.
We're chatting in June 2019. What what changes have you noticed in the last 3 years, say, of
3 years?
I don't know. How have you noticed? Yeah. Why not since you're here?
Yeah. Okay. Pietrasanta changed quite a lot from like, it was already changing when I was coming, but from a town that was living from the artisans, from the carving, but also the Bronze Foundry into a a bit of more posh, restaurant place. People come and have a nice evening, in the summer. So there are only and one is our place, only few places left in town where you still can see this this art and this, profession, in a yeah. I think in a lovely way where we stay because it's not only marble, there's also mosaic and bronze altogether.
And what about the type of work that you're being asked to do? How's that changed recently?
A part my activity like a teacher in a workshop, my own organized workshop, which is more and more requested. So more and more people from all over the world like to carve with me or realize things if it's just possible in a couple of weeks to to learn the basic things and take something with you that is, properly made. There's a lot of much more organizing, much more time goes into emails, sending pictures. The entire media world is I had days 10 years ago where I was carving from from the morning at 7 to the evening at 6 without anybody disturbing me and anything disturbing me. This is this is past.
The artisan skills generally, you know, like, how you learnt, what's changing, and how you're passing on?
Very, very complex question. I hope you have time. So as as I told you, I learned to do everything by hand, and I think it was a lovely occasion. But I understand that we cannot give this possibility to the people anymore. There's not enough work for getting enough assistance or trainees to help us and to pay them properly because the work is not paid very much.
It's a bit of problem that we have to push young people or whoever wants to be trained quite quickly into production. They have to learn quickly. New technology was coming up 10 years ago with the, robo computerized milling machine that can rough out, that can set points, come quite close to a sculpture's end. There is average 50% left of handwork then if you take it seriously. I've seen sculptures where this was reduced to 10% handwork because they just wanted to deliver it.
They were looking, from my point of view, quite ugly. This is a bit the direction where it goes. So produce more, more quantity, less quality. But if you think that what we take today as the traditional tool at all is our air hammer with all kind of different chisels. 100 years ago, this was considered a devil's tool by the old artisans who said, no. No. No. You won't do that thing. It will spoil you. It will it will make everything horrible, and you have to work by hand, really, with a hammer and your chisel in your hand.
And and I can see the difference of sculptures. I don't wanna judge anything of all this development, of all this new stuff, but I think we at least have to to admit that it will change our pieces. When I use a new tool, the art, the aesthetic will change, and that happens right now with the robo. The more we know of the entire range from the very, very basic and fundamental and old hand working up to the super high-tech computer, the I think the better, obviously, we can choose what is the right thing here to do. If I have to restore an or or make an an old sculpture new, but in the same way, so maybe a very important restoration work, I have to make a research first what tools did they use 500 years ago.
No. Otherwise, I risk him to make a mess with it.
So you learned from the artisans, when you first came here?
Yeah. I was lucky to have some of the old artisans next to me working in all the different companies I was working.
I think you said something when we were chatting the other day about you learned from Italians, but the Italians, young Italians aren't training up anymore. Is that so? It's more foreigners.
Now I'm training. I'm trying to hand it over, but I have to, almost all of my young assistants are from abroad. Fantastic young people with a lot of, enthusiasm and and, motivation, but they will leave, obviously, or most of them will leave the the area again and come and go back to their to their place. Almost no Italian.
Why is that?
I think it wasn't considered in the last generation, so my generation and maybe the generation before, it wasn't considered, a good job. It was just something where you get dirty. And the the amazing craftsmen, really people I I would never have the skill like them, maybe turned back home, came back home in the evening and were telling that their children don't never do that, you know, you won't make any money, it's just tiring, so try to get a doctor or to become, I don't know, sell iPhones.
So thanks to Christian. You can see his work on his website at marbleartwork.com. For photographs of all the work discussed in this series, follow our Instagram or visit our website, materiallyspeaking.com where you can sign up to our mailing list to hear about upcoming episodes. Editorial thanks to Michael Hall.