Piero Dri, 2022
Piero Dri is the fourth and youngest remer in Venice, making oars and oarlocks, or in Italian ‘forcolai’. Piero learned how to row aged just four. It's been his passion ever since.
I came to Venice with sound specialist Mike Axinn in April 2022, during the Homo Faber celebration of artisans, for a special Venice series of Materially Speaking. We met three young artisans who are now bringing a fresh energy to the community with a particular eye on repair, re-use and sustainability.
Venice is an extraordinary island city with a rich history, magnificent art and great beauty. However there are no cars and a frail infrastructure. And of course there are the tourists. So we were keen to discover what these artisans bring to Venice and why they like to call it home.
Piero outside his workshop
A forcolai on a gondola
Piero’s vibrant personality has earned him the name of the ‘mad forcolai maker’ and so his workshop is called ‘Il Forcolaio Matto.’ As we arrive, Piero is opening up his shop – hooking flower boxes onto his window sill, and leaning a striped oar against the wall.
He tells us about growing up in Venice, and how he escaped to the lagoon when he needed peace and to be with nature. He describes studying to become an astronomer before changing course to take up the life of an artisan.
Piero’s workshops have painted and varnished oars suspended from the ceiling. He speaks about the different woods he uses and the boat community in Venice.
Workshop with oars
Piero using the clamp
In one window is a display of decorative forcolai, which hold their own as art objects in a variety of gorgeous woods. He speaks of a competition where he created a forcolai to express the natural beauty of the lagoon (see green and yellow forcolai below).
Credits
Producer: Sarah Monk
Sound recording, edit/design: Mike Axinn
Music: courtesy of Audio Network
Flying Colours 3703/4, Christopher Slaski
I rose since I was four years old with my grandpa. It’s like walking, and it’s like to ride bicycle because by your you can cross the city very quickly also if you want, leaving Venice from the best point of view because Venice was projected to be road. You know? And all the canals, you have the most important point of view. And very important, you can enjoy the environment, the Lagoon Of Venice.
Sarah Monk:Hi. This is Sarah with another episode of Materially Speaking, where artists and artisans tell their stories through the materials they choose. Sound specialist Mike Axon and I are in Venice for a special series, meeting three young artisans who learnt their skills over many years and are now bringing a fresh energy to the community. They all have a keen eye on repair, reuse and sustainability. First, we’re meeting Piero Dri, a reiner who makes oars and oorlocks, or as the Italians call them, falcali.
Sarah Monk:Venice, of course, is a world without cars. Water laps at our side as we walk, and as we pause at top of a bridge, wide waterways stretch to our left and right, and palaces loom high, each marked with striped canal poles. There’s a boat loaded with building supplies holding wood, wheelbarrows, a cement mixer. Another, with a raised mechanical platform, is awaiting a coffin. There are slow boats with workmen chatting, slick fast boats with tourists taking photos, and of course, gondolas.
Sarah Monk:Piero’s vibrant personality has earned him the name of the Mad Forcali Maker, so his workshop is called Il Forcolaio Matto. As we arrive, he’s opening up his shop, hooking flower boxes onto his windowsill and leaning a red and white striped oar against the wall. Inside are workbenches and saws, wood samples and glue, and centrally a large wooden clamp on which the forkoli is shaped. There’s a healthy deposit of wood shavings on the floor. From the ceiling hang varnished oars and displayed in one window are decorative falkali in a variety of gorgeous woods which hold their own as art objects.
Sarah Monk:I asked Piero to introduce himself.
Piero Dri:My name is Piero Dri, is a short name, and I am an oar maker. In Venetian, we call this glasswork remer. Remer because remo is oar. And it’s one of the most ancient jobs still active in Venice because officially it’s born in ‘20 and everything in Venice was based on rowing. So the oar makers were very, very important also in the past.
Piero Dri:They made the big oars for the galeras, for big ships built in the Arsenale area. You know that the were able to make one ship per day. And because the is the first example of working chain, everybody had a specific skill, a specific rule in their senale. So if you think that every galea had 40 oars as long as this room, you can imagine there were a lot of people working there and a lot of oar makers. And then there were another kind of oar makers working outside the Arsenale and around the city of Venice and producing the smaller oars and the forkola, so the oar locks for the traditional smaller Venetian boats.
Piero Dri:The forkola is something special in Venice because it existed only in Venice. It is the Venetian or the roll lock for for the Venetian traditional boat. It’s the wooden object where the gondolier, the lower places the oar to drive the boat, to control the boat in all the directions.
Sarah Monk:What is a Sandolo?
Piero Dri:Sandolo is a very simple boat, very used by the people in the past to to move around Venice, also to carry something. And there are different models of sandal depending on where it was built. Sometimes in Burano, so the sandolo buraneo from Burano is bigger than the normal sandolo. Usually, it can go from six meters and half till nine eight meters, eight meters and half. And you can see it for touristic use, the black one the black one boat that is not a gondola.
Piero Dri:No? Sometimes you can see a smaller and flatter boat. And the rower stays inside of the boat, not over the boat like on the gondola. This is it’s like a sort of this. This is.
Piero Dri:This is a very light model.
Sarah Monk:What is it made of?
Piero Dri:This is a model in large.
Sarah Monk:In large. Okay.
Piero Dri:Large. But usually, this kind of boats are in a spruce wood, a large wood, the skeleton is in oak or elm, so a bit stronger. Nowadays, the boat maker uses usually plywood and marine plywood, obviously, for the bottom and the side, k, also on the gondola. So you can take the boat also out of the water for a long time. Instead, in the past, it was impossible because with the sun, without water, it cracks.
Piero Dri:It dries a lot and it it it can crack. No? So the boat must be in the water in the past.
Sarah Monk:Cool. Well, can we go back? Are you where were you born?
Piero Dri:Here in Venice in 1983, and I always lived in Venice. I rose since I was four years old with my grandpa. It’s like walking, and it’s like to ride a bicycle because by oar, you you can can cross cross the city, city very quickly, also, if you want, and leaving Venice from the best point of view because Venice was projected to be road. And all the canals, you have the most important point of view. And very important, you can enjoy the environment, the Lagoon Of Venice.
Piero Dri:I remember also during the teenage, when I when I was teenager, sometimes I escape away from from home and always by rowing. No? And I I went to the lagoon trying to sleep in the night away from everybody because I like to be with myself in silence and with nature. And so it’s a very important part of me, of course. I studied then at university in Padua, 40 kilometers from Venice, but always coming and going and coming every day.
Piero Dri:You know? So always lived in Venice. Now since three four years, I live in Murano, Island.
Sarah Monk:What did you study at Padua?
Piero Dri:I studied astronomy. I graduated in astronomy. And during the last two years of university, I began to to feel something strange in me, and I needed to come back to the real Venice. Because in my opinion, if you live closer to to the Venetian soul, you can love Venice. If you live looking only at the bad sides of living in Venice, because living in Venice is also very difficult sometimes, at the end, you risk to hate the city, and many people go away.
Piero Dri:So I felt that I was losing something. I was losing this very strong relationship with the city, and I felt the need to come back to my passion that’s rowing, that’s wood. And the only way to to put them together was to learn or to make boats. And at the end, I started to to make four colas and oars.
Sarah Monk:Was it in your family? Where do you have craftsman in your family? Is it a family tradition?
Piero Dri:No. It’s not a family tradition. My brother is four years younger than me. He didn’t study at the university, and he he worked after the secondary school directly on a boatyard making gondolas. So for twelve years, he made gondolas.
Piero Dri:And so I don’t know if I would like to to follow him or to to learn to make gondolas too. But at the end, I understood that wasn’t my way. And in this work, I found the best mirror of my character. Because making for Cola, I can put together the technical elements, the technical details, because for Cola has to be functional as first. But I’m also free to express myself myself from the artistical point of view.
Piero Dri:So I feel free to put together these two elements that are the same elements of my character. I’m very precise for some things, and I studied the scientific subjects. No? So in this way, this is my my thinking way. But at the same time, I constantly need to be free.
Sarah Monk:Is Venice a free sort of society, place to live?
Piero Dri:Not for the 100%. It’s not easy to live in a sort of bowl. I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s it’s right to build a bowl, your personal sphere in the Venetian society. Sometimes I think that it’s completely wrong because it’s very fundamental, the relationship between the humans and so on.
Piero Dri:But nowadays, to live in Venice, you need to have your balance and to go on to look to some details that the normal life tends to dilate. So this is the challenge. We live in a very touristical city that the Venetian environment is very weak. And if you love to live in Venice, you love Venice, and so you must do something for it.
Sarah Monk:And do you have a lot of family around? You bump into your brother?
Piero Dri:Yeah. Yeah. I have all my family. I have three brothers younger than me, parents, and my girlfriend. Everything.
Piero Dri:Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I’m lucky because I go on living my family dimension even if we are four brothers during the years at the end. You know?
Piero Dri:Many times we go to the mountains all together, and so it’s a luck for me.
Sarah Monk:Do the others work in so one is a makes gondolas?
Piero Dri:Not anymore. Now he’s just a wooden wood carpenter. No. Always craft work, but just we would. And in Venice, it’s very funny because everything in the houses, it’s tailor made.
Piero Dri:Because the angles of the houses, they are never 90 degrees or everything. No? So if you order a new kitchen, you have to call a a carpenter and not go to IK EA IKEA. So, yes, it’s it’s fun. Another is a flower, a flower designer.
Piero Dri:Designer. He’s studying flower designer. And the fourth is environmental engineer is finishing the studies in Panama.
Sarah Monk:Are there any other people who make the Orloks?
Piero Dri:Yeah. We I have my colleagues. We are four workshops in in Venice and five people because we are all alone except one workshop where they are two. And we are friends because Venice is very small. For some details, we have different ways to to look to to our job.
Piero Dri:Of course, there’s my master, still active, Paulo Brondolizio, and I recognize, of course, that I learned from him. So my personal view is part is also the his his view, no? On the on on the craft work in general. But I’m developing during the years my personal style maybe or because when you are artisan, your character comes to to the final object.
Sarah Monk:How did you meet your master?
Piero Dri:In 2006, my girlfriend, oh, the hippo, pushed me in in his workshop because I was looking for something to connect me again to the real Venice. I went inside this workshop, and I I asked if there was the possibility to to learn. The answer was not. No. And so I turned turned around.
Piero Dri:I was get out of the workshop. And while I was closing the door, my master said me, but if you want to try some hours, Sunday and so I started to learn to to touch the wood to impress of my in my mind the four color shape. I remember that when I went home in the evening, I tried to draw it to to fix it in my mind. And day by day, we both understood that we could evolve this very particular relationship. And it’s another luck I think I had because the relationship between the master and the pupil is something very, very particular that this society is losing, in my opinion.
Piero Dri:And it’s something very, very important because you have to respect your master, but an a nice master is able to respect the pupil always because the workshop becomes your personal home. So being a master is not simple because you have to share it. And you need a guy, a person who wants to share it with you and respecting it. So it’s not so simple to find. But when you find the balance and the agreement, it’s it’s perfect.
Sarah Monk:And how long did you work with or learn with him before you set up on your own?
Piero Dri:I’ve been there almost seven years, six, seven years. And after four or five years, you have a three sixty degrees view of the work. And then, of course, you have the final step that’s when you are alone in front of the lung because the first steps of making a furcola are always made by the by the master, you know, in in his workshop because he has to decide some details. When you are alone, you have to make this last step. If you pass it, you have the work in your hands, definitely.
Sarah Monk:So apart from technical skills, what did you learn from your master?
Piero Dri:I think that the most important things was the behavior, the relationship with the client. Because in Venice, working, for example, for the gondoliers, you have to joke always. Because joking, you are working. I don’t know. Sometime I go rowing with my boat.
Piero Dri:And my mother has a has a small boat too. And so rowing around Venice, some gondoliers tell, hey, I have an hour to repair. I have a to repair. So it’s a strange work because it is part of the city. And you must be faithful for the master teachings.
Piero Dri:Because at the end, they are the real way to reach the aim and the goal. No? And so this behavior to to be always faithful is very important.
Sarah Monk:You’re still in touch with your master. You would ask his advice?
Piero Dri:Yes. Of course. We are friend. We always share messages and so on. And for a long period, if I had some doubts, any doubts, I always ask to him before making because you never finish to to learn.
Sarah Monk:I love the fact that the gondolas will tell you know, you’ll just get the business because you’re out there rowing. Who else are your clients? Who else do you work for?
Piero Dri:I make oars for all Venice all the Venice Rowing Society. I’d like to go on making the traditional work at the service of the city. So I make oars for rowing because I believe in rowing in Venice. No? So I work for gondoliers, but for all the other Venetians who row for the racers because we have a sort of rowing championship during the summer season.
Piero Dri:And sometimes I make oars and forklifts also for the gondoliers around the world. There are some rowing clubs in Europe, but also in The States. Last year, I shipped some oars to to Perth in Australia because other guys fell in love with Venice with this particular rowing style.
Sarah Monk:I wanted to find out what different types of oars there are because presumably what a gondola uses is a gondolier uses is not what you use when you race.
Piero Dri:It’s like a pair of shoes a pair of shoes because you have different kind of shoes for every occasion. And specifically, we have different oars for different Venetian boats according to the size of the boat and to the use you do of that specific boat. And when you cut when you when you are making an oar, you have to meet the preferences of the roller because somebody prefers softer oar, somebody an harder one, and sometimes a heavier one for the windy days, for example. And there are some differences. Of course, an oar becomes your personal oar after some months you you use it, you go on using it.
Piero Dri:Because and in this sense, it’s like a pair of shoes. No? Because when they are new, they are for everybody. No? But with the daily use, they become your shoes.
Piero Dri:No? They take your walking style. And the same for the ore. So it’s very, very important to take care of the ore and to repair it. So part of my work is always to the repairing operation.
Piero Dri:And I go to to take off the broken or or the worn part of the ore, and I replace it with other slice of wood. I make again the right line for the hydrodynamical move.
Sarah Monk:When you row a certain way Uh-huh. You use different bits of the ore.
Piero Dri:Yeah. The Venetian ore is very complicated if you want because during the Venetian rowing style, the paddle has always to be under the waterline if you are rowing alone because you are rowing only on the right part, on the right side of the boat. You know? So when you push forward, the boat tends to go to the left, and then you have to correct the direction in some way. You know?
Piero Dri:And the way is on the coming back move. With the paddle under the waterline, you turn it on the other side, and you go breaking a bit, making the opposite move respect to when you are pushing.
Sarah Monk:What are the choices of woods for oars?
Piero Dri:For oars, it’s a difficult question because since sixties, more or less, 1960, the oars are not in beach wood anymore like in the past because Venetians took the beach trees from the closest mountains here or from history, all the Eastern Part of Europe. And so we we glue spruce wood on the finest quality without branches. Knots. Knots. Knots.
Piero Dri:The two blades, we we call them the knives because the two edges of the paddle go cutting the water. No? So for us are the corte, the knives. And these two elements are in beechwood nowadays too because beechwood is more resistant. And when with the paddle you go against another boat or the wall of a palace around the canals in Venice, it lasts more more time.
Piero Dri:The length of these two knives is not similar, but one is shorter than the other. One, because you have to recognize the oar to be used on the left or on the right side of the boat. So that the shorter knife goes always toward the back of the boat.
Sarah Monk:And varnish, what is it covered with?
Piero Dri:There are a couple of coats of oil, linseed oil, and then three, usually three coats of varnish for water. I usually put the first coat with polyurethane varnish and the second one’s with synthetic. Yeah. It’s always synthetic. It’s not it’s not natural varnish.
Piero Dri:It’s impossible to
Sarah Monk:I know. I can imagine.
Piero Dri:No. The research in the water based varnish is very active. But for the marine world, it’s very difficult nowadays to have a perfect flatting for resistant one, water resistant. Part of my job is also to fit perfectly the formula on every specific boat. And so it must be a very strong object, the different surfaces of the object allow the gondolier to place the oar on different positions to control the boat always.
Piero Dri:So there are, for example, in the case of the forcola for the gondola, there are six, seven different positions where the gondolier can place the oar. And so when I make a formula, there are some measures to take. There are some angles to consider because also the boats are always different. The gondola seems to be all similar, but they are handmade too. No?
Piero Dri:And so every time they are different, depending on who made them. And so many times I have to go when I finish the furcolo, I have to go to the yard. When the gondola is finished, I fit the leg of the forkola. We call the leg on the forkola the lower part that we fix inside of the boat. And it has to be perfect because without any wedge or any screw, the forklift has to remain fixed.
Piero Dri:But at the same time, every morning and every evening, the gondola take it off from the gondola, and he replaces it in a in a secret box or at home for for night.
Sarah Monk:Why is that?
Piero Dri:To to preserve the furcola from the night, from the weather, bad weather conditions, for example, but also against the steel of the Forcola. Because without Forcola on a boat, on a Venetian boat, you are completely lost because, for example, here in Grand Canal, the water is quite calm. But in San Marco Bay, in front of San Marco, there are a lot of waves due to the motorboats, due to the wind. And so the legs, the gondolier’s legs will be a bit lower and the forkola will be lower, will be a bit different from the forkola used here in Santa Sofia in Gran Canar. And so there are different elements to consider.
Sarah Monk:So the forkola, what woods do you make color from?
Piero Dri:To make a four color, I use for the 95% of the four colors, walnut wood. Generally, you can use a fruit tree. And so for this reason, sometimes I make a cherry wood, furcola or a pear wood. Sometimes you can use, if you find it, a apple or maple, this kind of wood because but walnut is the best because we need very huge trees and strong grain. But the fruit trees The fruit trees.
Piero Dri:Okay. The fruit trees have the particularity to have a a very smooth grain. And so when the formula wears out, it becomes very, very smooth. Okay? Without having a big hardness difference between the winter and the summer grain.
Piero Dri:It’s because the winter and the summer grain have two different hardness. In the case of fruit trees is not is always the same. And so the oar can worn the furcola very homogeneously, and it remains very smooth.
Sarah Monk:What you’re saying is that some woods, most woods, have a different texture in the winter than they do in the summer.
Piero Dri:Yes, because when you look to the ring of tree, usually darker ones are the moment in the year when the tree grows less than the other. It grows more, and you will have a softer wood. Usually, I need sixty, seventy centimeters of diameter, and they are around one one century, more or less. Hundred years or sometimes 100 a year, twenty or eighty years. This is the size.
Piero Dri:So more or less, we can say one centimeter per year.
Sarah Monk:So 90% are walnut. The others are some sort of fruit. Yes?
Piero Dri:Yes. Usually, due to my need to have big trees, it’s not so simple to find a big apple. Okay? So sometimes I can I can find a nice cherry wood? If I find it, I can buy it, but the seasoning, for example, of cherry is a bit more difficult than the seasoning, the natural seasoning of walnut because cherry tends to crack more than walnut.
Piero Dri:And I need always at least two, three years to dry wood. And in this period with the with the dry air stream on the usually on this surface of the of the log, can crack for fifteen, twenty centimeters. No? So this is the reason, for example, why I always go cutting higher blocks than the real one.
Sarah Monk:So you need a bigger chunk of wood than you need for the four color to allow for a little bit of wastage at the top when it’s Yeah. Well, they’re very beautiful. They look a bit like an arm with a elbow bent. How tall are It
Piero Dri:can go from 50 till one m. For example, the front rowing position on a gondola has a very small model of furcola because the gondolier is inside. For the gondola model, for example, the difference height range between a short and a tall man is around seven, eight centimeters. If you are one meter ninety, you will have 54 centimeters high for collar. Sometimes it’s fifty four.
Piero Dri:Sometimes it’s forty seven. Okay? So this is the range for the tailor made.
Sarah Monk:Do they come to your shop? Do the gondoliers come in and say, hey. Do a little of this. Do a little of that.
Piero Dri:Yes. Yes. Usually, very often, they have maybe an old to correct. Speaking about the setup of the. So sometimes they say I prefer to have it a bit forward, a bit more angled.
Piero Dri:This is the secret of every craft work at the end because it’s always a compromise, a balance between the artisan and the client, you know?
Sarah Monk:Can we talk about the artistic side? You said you have a freedom making the four colour.
Piero Dri:Yes.
Sarah Monk:What do you do?
Piero Dri:To make a thin four colour, okay, because my master made very thin forkula, and it was his style for less more or less. With my daily work, I modify a bit because I don’t like a forkula so much thinner. Another colleague, in my opinion, makes forkola too much heavy, something baroque and also on the lines because sometimes, for example, here, it goes straight. This is a foreground made by me four years ago. This line sometimes can be straight.
Piero Dri:Other masters can make it a bit round here. And so at the end, you have this sensation of an heavier shape, in my opinion. Or this curve sometimes is too thick or here on the head because we associate the formula to a human body. No? So you have the leg, the head bone, and the head with the two noses.
Piero Dri:The bite because it bites the oar and the ear to to break, to stop the gondola ear. There’s this channel here that the my master’s master signature in his workshop. So when I opened the ear in my workshop, I asked to to my master if I could make it also here. No? Because the school is the same.
Piero Dri:So I always make this channel as a signature of the forecourt. This is a carving symbol of the gondolier, and so I carved it here to recognize the to customize the forecourt. It’s an it’s a unique piece. I made another one for a client in San Diego. Not San Diego, in North Carolina.
Piero Dri:And I make a special edition one for her husbands and with the 61 because it was the 60 birthday of the husband. Joined a contest with this one. I don’t know the result yet, but the theme was the strength of nature, you know, and the beauty of nature. So I started from the rubbish of the plastics that I collect in Santa Rasmo Island in the lagoon. And then from the garbage, the natural grows up, and you find all the different plants of the Venetian Lagoon, no, to express the strength of nature.
Piero Dri:This a new a reinterpretation of the forkola. And in this way, the forkola for me is the symbol of rowing. So it’s it’s the symbol of a sustainable Venice, but it’s also the symbol of the strength of nature, so the environment in this sense. No?
Sarah Monk:So you sell these four color as artistic items, works of art?
Piero Dri:Yes. Mhmm. Yes. I place the forkola on a standing, and I sell it as a sculpture. There’s no difference be between the sculpture and the forkola to be used because I want to sell the real forkola.
Piero Dri:Something similar to the furcolor for me is not a furcolor. So you can put it at home, but in the future, if you want to to buy a Venetian boat, you could also use it.
Sarah Monk:Do you imagine that you may teach this craft to somebody else?
Piero Dri:Of course. This is something that I have to think about very soon because after this ten years, I’m starting to understand that I have to to make another step in my career, if you want, in my life, in my way to look to my job. And it’s very, very important to teach to somebody this one and to it’s very difficult because sometimes you are at the limit between working, running alone and have enough work for two people. But it is very difficult because you have to prepare something to do also for him that he is learning. So you have to invest a lot of time and make a revolution on your working process.
Piero Dri:But I think I must do in in few years. Do it.
Sarah Monk:That’s fantastic. That was brilliant. So thanks to Piero Dre. You can discover more about him on his website ilforcalaimato.it or find him on Instagram at ilforcalaiomato. And thanks to you for listening.
Sarah Monk:As with all episodes, can find photographs of the work discussed on our website, materiallyspeaking.com, or on Instagram. If you’re enjoying Materially Speaking, subscribe to our newsletter on our website so we can let you know when the next episode goes live.