Exhibitions. “Created in Italy”, an exhibition proposed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, explores the best of industrial design. It takes off from San Francisco

Enzo Mari, our beloved and unmatched “Michelangelo of matches”, liked sickles. Even more than for ideological reasons (of which there were those too, no one denies it), for aesthetic reasons: and, indeed, profoundly, for design reasons. They were objects, that is, that had the capacity of combining functional perfection – cutting the grass with precision and with ecological advantages (a hand mowing leaves clean grass, does not create the pulp that machine cutting does, which can lead to fungal diseases) – also an “unexpected beauty”: an exceptional stylistic figure that, in the variation of models, was also able to fascinate for the concrete (and, in fact, unexpected: but you have to know how to see it!) “graphic” solution. Therefore, in an exhibition that celebrates the best of the Italian design and innovation industry, the sickles of the company from Dronero whose name, Falci, has that meaning in Italian, fit in perfectly. And even more: they are, together, a symbol of resilience, reliability and practical wonder (apart from the promise of sweat they carry with them). Company reference for farmers all over the planet, the Falci company from the Cuneo area. (Forging blacksmiths since 1600) keeps an archive of myriads of different models and forms that interpret and support the same gestures, identical for millennia: over 300 types and a market in 54 countries, from a small village in Piedmont to grassy meadows, scattered all over the world, full of every sort of grass.
The apex of Falci – one of the many examples that could be made – is significant of an exhibition of great symbolic (and entrepreneurial) importance that begins an international tour. Almost an atlas of the creativity and beauty of Italian industry, expressed according to the perspective of the “impossible” (delicate word to handle) yet nevertheless, existing.
It is entitled “Created in Italy” and, at the request of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has been entrusted to the wise hands and minds of two celebrated designers such as Odo Fioravanti and Giulio Iacchetti, with Francesca Picchi, and bears, as appropriate, the subtitle “The attitude for the impossible”.
“This exploration of Italian industry – the curators write in the catalogue – brings out an archipelago of successful experiences that represent the peaks of an attitude that has made our nation unique. A system of medium or small companies that, however, has had the gigantic effect of changing the history of the material culture of the world.

Il Sole 24 Ore
23/01/2022
Journalist: Stefano Salis