About a half hour north of Florence in an area formerly used by Medici princes as their country getaway lies the village of Borgo San Lorenzo. And down a side street in this little town that feels like a mini Florence is the studio Alice le Maschere. For more than twenty years the artists there have been making artistic masks in papier mache. The work is, simply, stunning.

The likelihood of stumbling into Alice le Maschere is zero. You must want to find them in order to find them. And we wanted to find them. We were introduced to the studio last year when Bella Italia participated in a program sponsored by the Italian government’s international trade agency, ICE. Acting as middleman between artists and American retailers, ICE connected 14 U.S. retail stores with over 40 of Italy’s best craftsmen. Among them was Alice le Maschere.

We were immediately blown away with what we saw in the ICE materials, haunting masks not so much for wearing but for decorating, in fantastic designs and full of artistic symbols and references. We had been searching for maskmakers, as our two previous suppliers had folded or gone on to focus on other endeavors. ICE’s initiative came at just the right time and was much appreciated.

Over the Christmas holiday season we displayed a couple dozen of Alice’s masks. By the New Year there was just a handful remaining on our walls. They had proven themselves and a reorder was in order. So, too, was a visit to the studio to meet the men behind the art and to learn their story as well as the story behind their creations.

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So on a day we would be driving our sons and their friends to Florence for a walking tour and to see the sights, we began with a visit to Borgo San Lorenzo. It was not easy finding Alice’s studio, even with GPS. But we did and were greeted by Bijan, a short, cheerful man who is the artistic spark behind the studio’s work. He was in the closet-like studio-showroom by himself, working on applying gold leaf to a small mask. He was expecting our visit and greeted us warmly.

Over the next hour we listened to him talk about the process of making papier mache and his artistic influences. But mostly we gazed upon the designs hung on the walls, stacked on shelves, sitting on racks drying. We picked them up and studied them, felt their energy. We marveled at their artistry. Tiny strips of paper and glue transformed into beautiful works of art, faint etchings on their surface giving them even greater weight and import. Art that rewards you for looking deeper and deeper, each new glance rewarding the effort.

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In the center of the studio is a large plaster cast of the face of Michaelangelo’s David, about two feet tall from chin to the top of the head. This cast was made from a clay carved negative and serves as the base in which Bijan’s paper mache is formed into the familiar visage. From there, the piece is laid out in the courtyard to dry in the sun. Only after drying is the true art begun. Gold, silver or bronze leaf, thin, wispy sheets of foil are applied to the surface and dappled, colored or altered according to artistic whim. Often the surface is then etched with images from renaissance masters. Each piece, while sharing a common beginning, is unique. Each one is a masterpiece.

We heard about many of the shapes Bijan produces, the stunning, delicate pregnant woman figure with her head surmounted by a larger head of her newborn baby, the two lives intertwined through the sucking of the mother’s thumb by the child. We saw and heard of a sea of visages, disembodied eyes and noses floating on an undulating sea of gold. Bacchus, comedy and drama and others. The walls were chocked with haunting, beautiful images and all we could do was marvel.

My words cannot do justice to the beauty we saw that day. Nor can my camera, which suffers from extreme operator insufficiency. But please shuffle through my photos and you will understand that what we saw that day and what hopefully you, too, can see, is pure art.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy