DIFFUSED GOLDSMITHERY MUSEUM [MOD, "Museo dell'Oreficeria Diffuso"]
The MOD - Museo dell'Oreficeria Diffuso - will tell the historical identity of Valenza through a narration that is not entrusted to a single place but to a set of venues, both physical and virtual, united by a thematic itinerary.
Currently, the first three MOD stations located in the historical town center are visible.
Within the ancient facility of San Domenico (formerly, the "Carducci" elementary school) the reconstruction of a goldsmith's workshop of the early 1900s has been set up in the area of the outer porch, in a window of the Diffused Goldsmithery Museum in Via IX Febbraio. All the tools, machines and objects on display belong to the precious collection that the association Amici del Museo dell'Arte Orafa di Valenza has wisely preserved and ordered over the years. In addition to this material there is a 15th century chest belonging to an ancient goldsmith family from Faenza that Stefano Verità had purchased on behalf of the Valenza Goldsmithery Association during the period in which he was President (1983-1988) and recently granted in use to the Municipality of Valenza.
The other two venues of the MOD are Palazzo Valentino - Centro Comunale di Cultura (Municipal Center of Culture) and the round-about of Largo Costituzione. In these two locations ancient machinery for gold manufacturing are displayed, also part of the collection of the Amici del Museo dell'Arte Orafa di Valenza association.
The diffused museum also has its own specific logo which was taken from the one created in 1996 by Ezio Campese for the Museo dell'Oreficeria. The reproduction of the logo in the version for the Museo Diffuso is by Davide Fossati, a graphic designer from Nuvole.
This is how the then Culture Councillor Costanza Zavanone illustrated the project of the Diffused Goldsmithery Museum:
"ABOUT THE DIFFUSED MUSEUM - "It is well known that for several years now the establishment of a goldsmithery museum in Valenza has seemed a utopian enterprise, considering the very high costs that its management would involve, to mention at least one of the problematic elements that its existence would entail.
Being convinced of the need for cultural policies relating to goldsmith work, since the beginning of my office I have been thinking of a possible solution to this problem by looking at the alternative model of the diffused museum. Starting from this idea of deconstructing the founding elements of a museum in different places, I imagined a scheme whose stages would be distributed over the years, so as to lay the foundations of a design that could grow over time, involving the whole city of Valenza and future administrations.
Four years ago, with the participation in a regional tender for surveying business archives, Riccardo Massola's tenacious work began. Through the collaboration of many historical companies in the district, the Amici del Museo dell'Arte Orafa association and the For.Al "V. Melchiorre" goldsmithery school, he created the www.archiviorafivalenza.it website, a true virtual museum of jewelry, unique in Italy; it even allows a "three-dimensional" entrance in two laboratories, a traditional one and a very modern one. Two exhibition places have been added to this: a few pieces at the Municipal Center of Culture and the small beautiful window in S. Domenico. Hopefully, the initiatives of the Municipality will be joined by private individuals in the future, offering visitors in different spaces, for example, temporary exhibitions which could be of great value, along a mobile itinerary in continuous growth.
I understand that my idea can be a visionary one. However, I believe it is worth going on with it. By recovering the archives, the Friends of the Museum collection and by using the logo developed by Ezio Campese for the museum, we are now proving that past efforts have not only not been wasted, but are also there to mark a new beginning."
Valenza: Giuseppe Raia was 13 years old when he used cuttlefish bone to melt by hand the metal, like the one exhibited at the "MOD", the Diffused Goldsmithery Museum.