Word: masterful
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...Apart from its spine-chilling sound, the Servais has had a spine-chilling history between its last caress at the hands of the Italian master in Cremona and its arrival at the U.S. museum in 1981, via a bequest. It is a tale that helps to draw the line distinguishing craftsmanship from mass production. Machines give us precision, volume, economy; they have democratized the making of things by putting quality goods within the reach of more than just the rich. But articles whose construction demands the human hand, eye, ear - and, yes - heart, rarely come off a production line...
...follow in this report, for which a score of correspondents and another dozen photographers fanned out across Europe to discover how the guildhall has met high-tech. At Waterford Crystal in Ireland, for example, each piece of glassware still passes through up to 40 pairs of hands, and master cutter Jim O'Shea still keeps about 400 designs in his head. But today, the chance of a flawed piece of glassware leaving Waterford is less likely than ever: a modern quality-control system flags any defect on computer screens...
...teach him. Part of it was his own fault: he arrived in Venice in July, just before the locals take off on vacation for a month. So he did research on gondolas for a couple of months, and in September met up with one of the few remaining master gondola makers, Daniele Bonaldo, 69, a squerariolo who had been in the business since he left primary school. "I used to sweep the floors, pick up the bent nails and straighten them out so we could still use them," says Bonaldo. "We didn't throw them away like we do today...
...Italy the demand for gondolas is strong, in part because the art of gondola construction is in crisis. Price points out that there are only five boatyards in Venice that still make gondolas, and that some do more maintenance work than construction. The average age of the six master squerarioli is about 60. And some don't even have one apprentice learning the trade. "Young people in Italy want to make a lot of money and don't want to get their hands dirty," Price says. "But you don't make a lot of money" making gondolas. High labor costs...
...boats, practical experience is everything. "If you have passion and skill, you can do it," he says. Bonaldo clearly sees those attributes in Price, and is proud of having helped the young American. "He does things well because he has a lot of patience," Bonaldo says. "He's the master." Not yet, but he might be before long...