n the year 1380: from farming to the origins of the smith’s art
31 March 1380: on this day 600 years ago, the heads of the families of Maniago met under the town’s Loggia to decide on various matters. Among the participants, next to that of the other craftsmen who exercised the professions of barber, weaver and cobbler, also appeared the name of a smith: Nicolussio, first smith of Maniago. This was the year 1380.
In the year 1450: water as an essential source of energy
During the Middle Ages in Europe a massive transformation took place in the use of driving power as a production system: water mills, already familiar to the ancient Romans, began to be used. In 1400 hydraulic wheels were introduced to drive mills, sawmills, bellows, spinning-mills, forges and, in Maniago, the first anvil. In 1445 Count Nicolò of Maniago obtained permission from the Venetian Republic to: “build or erect any mill or building for saws” and to retain “any revenue or income he may receive”.
In the year 1453: the blacksmiths’ anvils
Water, which was meant to irrigate fields and drive millstones, instead supplied driving power for the “donkey-head hammers” of the blacksmiths’ anvils which allowed the “smiths” to forge ploughshares,
scythes, large knives, bill-hooks and axes for farming the surrounding fields and for cutting down trees.
The technique, originally introduced due to the need to make working tools, progressed rapidly year after year, laying solid bases for that which was to be the development of the art of smiths and craft workshops.
In the 1500’s: arms for the Venetian Republic
The notary’s deed of 15 June 1500 drawn up between the captain of the Venetian Republic Giovanni Vitturi, and the Maniago aristocrat Petrus Rigotti, reveals that the blacksmiths mass-produced products of a certain prestige, such as arms, for the troops of the Venetian Republic, a short distance from Maniago.
In the 1700’s: the craft workshops
The increased demand for always smaller working tools specifically conceived for various functions, a brand new desire for aesthetical appearance and for higher precision, these were the factors which strongly contributed to the development of the craft workshops and can be considered also the start for the production of pocket-knives, scissors and surgical instruments. Gio Battista Vallan, from Maniago, encouraged by a notice of the Prefect, which invited exhibition at the Royal Palace of Sciences and Arts of Milan “... of those products of their workshops which appeared worthy of public attention”, took part by sending a box of various surgical instruments which he had produced. The care and skill shown, in such a specialist and technologically advanced area, made a favourable impression on the committee of judges for this reason: “... the finish shows such fineness and cleanness that it is hoped that the smith will in the future manufacture the tools of the surgical art on a large scale, that they may become widespread throughout the Kingdom and replace those coming from abroad”.
In the 1800/1900’s: the great economic growth
At the start of the new century the art of smiths assumed an increasingly predominant role in the economy of the community which was later to make Maniago known as the Town of cutlery works. This was an art learnt and perfected with courage, stubbornness and enthusiasm and without being able to rely on local supplies of the raw material: iron. This fact made their product less competitive compared to
other producers, yet of higher quality. Letter dated 1 December 1805 from Count Fabio of Maniago to the Prefect of the Department of Passariano and to the Podestà of Maniago: “...whereas a scythe from Carinthia, Austria, is worth four Venetian lire, one of ours is worth 15, except that the latter lasts 6 years, while the former lasts only one year”. Still today, the production of precision instruments is based on this tradition of quality, which has become culture.
