"G.Lera" plaster figurine and emigration Museum - Coreglia Antelminelli (LU) - One of the most beautiful villages in Italy - Tuscany

This phenomenon, unique of its kind, only occurred in this valley from the 16th to the 20th century and then spread throughout the world thanks above all to Guglielmo Lera.#tuttitaly

Position📍 Video Coreglia 🎥

The Municipal Administration of Coreglia Antelminelli established the Plaster Figurine and Emigration Museum in 1975 to study the figurine maker's way of being and organizing emigration has been over time.

Three fundamental reasons determined the institution of the museum:

- the migratory phenomenon based on selling plaster figurines from the 18th to the 20th century.

- the presence on the site of a palace left as a dowry to the town in 1915 by Baron Carlo Vanni, a figurine maker who had lived for a long time in the Austro-Hungarian empire;

- the donations of prints and specimens made to the Municipality by the heirs of those who emigrated to various continents.

In the museum, the exhibition consists of 1300 plaster specimens representing the technical evolution of this craft from 1600 to today. Among the most valuable objects we remember; are eighteenth-century kittens blackened with candle smoke, the original mask of the Count of Cavour, and busts made with lost print.

In the museum's various rooms, we can admire the plaster reproductions of the most famous protagonists of the past, from Napoleon to Garibaldi, from Dante to Petrarch, from the most famous German musicians to the characters of ancient Rome and Greek mythology.

The humble and enterprising wanderer who, from one continent to another, manufactured and sold plaster statuettes to bring back home the fruit of his hard work and his multifaceted experience, as well as deciding on the economic and social fabric, he also supplied the conditions for a more composite and universal civilization locally.

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