Glass and gondolas in Venice

Murano glass taking shape

Early start of the day in Venice. I am here for a photo workshop and we are off to catch the sun rise by the dock of the ferry to Murano, where Stefano has talked to his brother in law who owns a glass shop. We will have the privilege of being let into the shop while the dozen or so glass blowers are working to make the glass masterpieces which make Murano famous.

About a dozen artisans are blowing glass today, all Italian men plus a young and very thin French lady who has moved here six years ago to learn the trade. It seems that with 8% "unemployment" in Italy we need to import tall young girls from Burgundy to keep the magic of Murano glass alive! She follows closely each and every move of the senior master, who sometimes holds her hand in a fatherly fashion to guide her through the moves that transform sand into glass masterpieces.

The atmosphere is magic. In the middle of the shop a huge furnace radiates intense heat, and all around skilled workers dance with their red-hot glass at the end of a steel pole, blowing, cutting, chiselling, attaching gold leaves, shaping and reshaping their creations.

We leave the shop after two very full hours and take the ferry back to Venice, where a lineup of "spritz" is waiting for us at a local bar. They will be followed by delicious cicchetti for a true Venetian lunch by Rialto. I was afraid to run into a tourist trap, of which there are too many in the neighborhood, but ended up in a delightful little restaurant for a very special treat.

Fixing gondolas

The day then continues with a visit to  "squero" of San Trovaso, a shop where they build and maintain gondolas, the trademark boats of Venice. Again thanks to the good offices of Stefano we are welcomed into one of a handful of workshops where this ancient art is kept alive by a bunch of skilled masters.

As one of them shows us the tools he explains that a gondola costs about thirty thousand euro as it comes out of the carpenter's shop, with no accessories, decorations, or anything one would call an "optional" in a car. It can be twice as much when it hits the water with all its bells and whistles installed. There are only 420 licensed gondolas in Venice and licences are impossible to get unless you are well connected into the inner circles of the city and come from a family of gondolieri.

This squero can only make two new gondolas per year, and spend most of its labor time on maintenance. I had the good luck to witness some of this work today, one master was pushing special straw thread in the crevices between the long beams of a gondola to improve its water tightness. As the sun sets, a gondoliere arrives at the squero to deliver his gondola for repairs. Everyone gives a hand to raise it from the water, and after a first inspection a workplan is agreed upon. It's time for us to say farewell, and head off to town for a dinner of polenta with cuttle fish in its black ink sauce...

Book Review: Formosa Betrayed, by George Kerr, *****

Island of Tatan, off Quemoy with Nationalist flag

By way of background...

"Our experience in Formosa is most enlightening. The Administration of the former Governor Chen Yi has alienated the people from the Central Government. Many were forced to feel that conditions under autocratic rule [Japan's rule] were preferable.

Recensione: Percorsi d'Amore, di Maurizio Cremasco, ****

Recensione
Questa è una serie di poesie che trasmettono lo stato d'animo irrequieto dell'autore, uno scrittore che è stato pilota da caccia e politologo, si è appassionato di vini e cucina ed ha viaggiato per il mondo. Una fertile mente che affronta l'ultima fase della sua vita con l'entusiasmo di un aitante giovanotto. Nelle poesie traspare questo afflato ansioso, la voglia di vivere, l'energia che sprizza da tutti i pori...

Book review: Coral Gardens, by Leni Riefenstahl, *****

Review
Leni Riefenstahl was a great, if politically controversial, movie director, but only later in her life she picked up photography in a serious way. Her books on African tribes are justly famous.

Book Review: A Little Book of Zen, *****

I bought this book some six years ago and it has found a permament home atop my writing desk ever since. I open it almost every day, usually on a random page, and almost always find someething that gives me reason to pause and think positively. Strongly recommended as dispenser of a daily pill of wisdom.

Recensione: People from Ikea, di Andrea Pugliese, ***

Sinossi
Componendo a incastro questi tubi, ripiani, viti e bulloni, sono possibili milioni di combinazioni. Sul catalogo per tale meraviglia si sprecano i sostantivi: guardaroba, libreria, scaffalatura, separatore d'ambiente, portatutto, riassumicasino...

Book Review: Slaves of the Cool Mountains, by Alan Winnington, *****

Author with released slaves in Yunnan

Synopsis

Beijing, 1956: foreign correspondent Alan Winnington heard reports of slaves being freed in the mountains of south-west China. The following year he travelled to Yunnan province and spent several months with the head-hunting Wa and the slave-owning Norsu and Jingpaw. From that journey was born this book, which Neal Ascherson has called 'one of the classics of modern English travel writing'. The first European to enter and leave these areas alive, Winnington met a slave-owner who assessed his value at five silver ingots ('Your age is against you, but as a curiosity you would fetch a decent price'), a head-hunter who a fortnight earlier killed a man in order to improve his own rice harvest and a sorcerer struggling against the modern medicines sapping his authority and livelihood.

Book Review: Excerpta Maldiviana, by HCP Bell, *****

Male' harbour in early 1880s
H.C.P. Bell 1887

This is not easy reading. In fact it is not really meant for reading at all. It is mostly a comprehensive catalog of historical documents on the islands, compiled by a British civil servant who went there many times over several decades spanning the end of the XIX century and the beginning of the XX.

Book review: Maldives: Kingdom of a Thousand Isles (2004), by Andrew Forbes, ****

Cemetery on a Maldivian island

Precious little is written on the Maldives besides guide books on posh resorts. This book goes a long way toward filling that gap. The author is well read on the subject and has spent considerable time travelling around the archipelago. He provides fairly exhaustive historical and cultural analyses.

In treno in giro per l'Italia

La settimana scorsa ho deciso di prendere il treno per andare da alcuni amici a Vicenza. Aperta la pagina delle prenotazioni di Trenitalia ho indicato le stazioni di partenza e di arrivo, Roma e Vicenza, e ho scelto data e ora per il mio viaggio. Per un biglietto Frecciargento di prima il prezzo era di 116 Euro. Non proprio regalato, i prezzi dei treni sembrano ormai paragonabili a quelli degli aerei. A titolo di paragone sono andato a vedere quanto costano biglietti simili in altri paesi, sempre in 1a classe. In Francia Parigi-Bordeaux costa dai 40 ai 75 euro, un affare. Per la verità in Germania sembra il treno costi ancora di più, Francoforte-Monaco si vende a 140 euro. In Inghilterra da Londra a Newcastle costa sui 150 euro. In Spagna da Madrid a Barcellona si pagano dagli 80 ai 210 euro a seconda del servizio. Ma andiamo per ordine e cominciamo dall'inizio: la prenotazione.

Bibliography: Books on the Maldives

This is my selection of most significant books on the Maldive islands, which I have visited at least ten times since 2003: culture, history, tourism, politics, and of course travelogues, I have tried to include as much as I could. Let me know if you have suggestions of titles to include in this list! 

Per prima cosa vorrei presentare il mio libro sulle Maldive! Lo trovate su Amazon.it in formato cartaceo e ebook.




Guide / Guidebooks

Ellis, Royston: Maldives (Bucks, England: Bradt Travel Guides, 3rd edition, 2005).

Ghisotti, Andrea: Pesci delle Maldive (Firenze: Casa Editrice Bonechi, 2007).

Forbes, Andrew: Maldives - Kingdom of a Thousand Isles (Hong Kong: Odyssey, 2004).

Vv. Aa.: Spectrum Guide to the Maldives (Nairobi, Kenya: Camerapix Publishers Inter­national, Revised edition, 1998).

Carte goegrafiche / Maps

Globetrotter travel map: Maldives 1:500.000 (London: New Holland, 2002)

World Cart: Maldive 1:700.000 (Bologna: Studio F.M.B., senza data).

Divers and Travelers: A Guide to the Maldives Archipelago, various scales (Victoria, Australia: Apollo Editions, 4th edition, 2004).


Racconti di viaggiatori / Travelogues

Battuta, Ibn: Maldives and Ceylon (Colombo: Royal Asiatic Society, 1882, reprinted in Delhi by Asian Educational Society, 1999).

Bell, H.C.P.: Excerpta Maldiviana (R.A.S., Ceylon 1922-1935; reprinted by Asian Educatonal Service, Delhi, 1998). A detailed catalog of documents on Maldivian history.

Eibl-Eibesfeldt , Irenaeus: Land of a Thousand Atolls (English translation, London: McGibbon and Kee, 1965).

Hockly, T. W.: The Two Thousand Isles, (London: Witherby, 1935).

Jones, Steve: Coral - a Pessimist in Paradise (London: Little, Brown, 2007).

Pyrard de Laval, François: Voyages, various editions available in French and English. Click here to find many editions of Pyrard's work.


Storia, politica e cultura / History, politics and Culture

Heyerdahl, Thor: The Maldive Mystery (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1986). Archeological research into the islands' pre-Islamic past.

Grover, Verinder /Ed.): Maldives: Goverment and Politics (New Delhi: Deep and Deep Publications, 2002). A complete reference tool for Maldivian politics.

Hogendorn, Jan and Marion Johnson: The Shell Money of the Slave Trade (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986). The definitive book on Maldivian shell money usage in South Asia and Africa.

Robinson, John J.: The Maldives: Islamic Republic, Tropical Autocracy (2015). An English journalist worked four years in the Maldives, 2010 to 2013 and this is what he found out. Lots of detailed facts.

Romero-frias, Xavier: Folk Tales of the Maldives (2012)

Book Review: Daily Life in China in the XIII century, by Jacques Gernet, *****

Gengiz Khan and Chinese Tangut envoys

This book deals with one of the periods when China, then numbering sixty million inhabitants, was the richest and most powerful empire in the world. (Another such period would occur some 500 years later, and another one might be soon in the making.)

During the Sung dynasty the country flourished, even though wealth was far from evenly distributed, and the excesses of a small minority contributed to a worsening balance of payments and eventual weakening of the economy.


This empire would take a beating because of the Mongols' invasion in 1276, but up to then it was an even more impressive China than that Marco Polo would witness several decades later.

The capital was in Hangzhou, a port city near today's Shanghai, and its commercial fleet plied the seas exporting porcelain and silk. There was also relative peace, despite the fact that the Northern provinces had been lost already to the Mongols, who were held out for a while until Gengiz Khan invaded.

The book is written in scholarly academic style, but its flowing prose remains accessible to the non specialist as well. Buy this book on Amazon!

Book Review: The Two Thousand Isles: A Short Account of the People, History and Customs of the Maldive Archipelago, by T. W. Hockly (1935), ***

Old Friday mosque in Malè, perhaps early XX century

Review

A short account of the people, history and customs of the Maldive Archipelago, written in 1935.  T.W. Hockly spent many weeks in the Maldives in 1935 and his book is an interesting account of his time there. He tells about life in the islands, and especially in the capital Male' where he actually spent his time. His account is interspersed with historical and political commentary, much of which is useful to put his experience in context.

Book Review: Spectrum Guide to Maldives, by Camerapix, ****

Review
This is an interesting book on the Maldives, unlike most guide books on the market. It contains lots of useful data about the country's history and culture, and therefore it is still interesting even if published many years ago.

Book Review: Maldives Mistery, by Thor Heyerdahl, ***

From the museum of Malè, 2009

Synopsis

When the Maldive Islanders converted to Islam in the 12th century, they discarded or destroyed all traces of earlier cultures, thus denying their past. Recent archeological discoveries prompted the government to invite Heyerdahl to examine the artifacts and attempt a reconstruction of pre-Islamic history.

Located in the Indian Ocean southwest of India and west of Sri Lanka, the Maldives encompass two broad, reefless sea passages ("One-and-Half" and Equatorial Channels) well-known to ancient mariners. Heyerdahl, an authority on primitive sea travel (Kon-Tiki, The Ra Expeditions, unravels a mystery that reaches into the vanished civilizations of Sumer and the Indus Valley. The Maldivan artifacts showed that temples were built around A.D. 550; that the original settlers had been sun-worshipers. (Reed Business, 1986).