The workshop of iron master Pietro Trivilino

The entrance to the master's workshop, linked to so many cherished memories

The memory of metal

All of this in Ortona is synonymous with Pietro Trivilino, master ironworker, a proud Lancan and adopted Ortonese, who had his workshop on Cavour Street in Ortona. On December 26, 2020, 16 years after the master's death, and on his birthday, his very workshop was finally reopened to the public. A workshop with his works illuminated by lights, his photography, his famous Christs, the art of being able to recognize where and in what way to beat the hammer to make the material follow what one has in mind, until it becomes an artistic unique piece. A symbolic place, where the metal is not cold, but suffused with the warmth of the fond memory of those who were lucky enough to see the artist at work.

Inside the workshop, Trivilino's works are on display next to a photo of him

Portrait of a craftsman

Master Trivilino, a man of extraordinary artistic and human gifts, is remembered by all with his huge mustache and prominent sideburns, jovial voice and red eyes tearing through the glowing splashes of the blowtorch. But the best memory is of a man in the doorway of the workshop offering candy to children as he tells the story of Pinocchio, his best-known work and displayed at the entrance with a plaque that reads "I am Pinocchio: kind, studious, cheerful and fine, because made by Trivilino." A work perhaps so beloved precisely because, like Geppetto with his piece of wood, the masters of burned iron possess the grand art of giving a soul to a simple piece of iron.