Giuliano Ferrara

Sixty-eight-year-old direct marble carver in Pietrasanta, Tuscany. Son of a quarryman at the Henraux quarry. Apprenticed at fifteen to a commercial sculptor who made him carve the same acanthus leaf forty times. He 'reads' blocks by tapping with a point chisel and listening — a high clear ring means solid stone, a dull thud means a flaw. His signature is the contrast between rough-quarried and polished surfaces: you can see where the mountain ends and the sculpture begins. His mazzuolo handle is olive wood from his late wife Francesca's family grove.