Grandpa’s Hands

My grandparents were handy people. All of my favorite memories of them have something to do with their hands. Maybe it was the way that my grandma rubbed my back or my face with affection, or their hands skillfully cooking risotto together, or the funny / traumatic story about how grandpa almost lost his finger during yard work (it was luckily later reattached…)

My grandparents were handy people, and if I think about it while looking at my own hands, I believe to have inherited them.

My grandparents were a great source of inspiration growing up. Grandma was a beautiful extroverted, loving, and caring woman. She carried herself with spectacular charm and style and was known by everyone in the community. Grandpa was quieter, more reserved, and in a certain way simpler. He was a man of very well-oiled habits: coffee and newspapers at the Saturday morning bar, the yearly meet-up with the local biking club folks during one of the many local fairs or sporting events, with whom he’d cook pasta or polenta for hundreds of people, his homemade grappa that he distilled every year after harvesting his grapes  (and that I was told by some friends is a little “strong”), and that even made its way to the US, stuffed in a suitcase by his mischievous nephews. There was also his deck of cards, which he used to play solitaire on the kitchen table so often that would become unrecognizably faded by mid-November, and I recurringly replaced as a Christmas gift. 

But then there were parts of him that I knew very little of for a long time and that I started learning about only recently. Times in his life when he was an artisan, even before he was a grandfather.

He was known by the entire town as ul Pitúr (“the house painter” in dialect) and yet it was only during the last years of his life that I would recognize what that truly meant for him: being a house painter for him meant a great deal of simplicity and humility, which he carried on himself proudly until his passing. It meant a great deal of responsibility as he employed a few workers to work for him. It meant being extremely proud of his skills and proud of where he belonged. He celebrated his ancestors by painting family trees and family coat of arms and of course by telling tales to the kids sitting around the dining table.

I can feel that it was with that simplicity, humility, and passion that he yielded those tools on the daily. Tools that made it to my studio, all the way across the ocean just like his throat-burning delicious grappa. And it is with the same simplicity, humility, and passion that a few months ago I finished the restoration of his draw knife. It took me this long to find the right words to describe what it meant to me, because this tool, this draw knife, didn’t just belong to my grandpa “nonno Bruno”, it represents him.

I debated for months when it was the right time to restore this tool. Did it need a full makeover or just a sharp blade? As an artisan, specifically as a house painter, I imagined he would find satisfaction in seeing it being restored to its original state, just like applying a fresh coat of white paint to a wall to give it new life. I’d like to think that me showing to him his old tool would be followed by a big nod of approval and a quick comforting gesture of his almost-severed finger (a story for another day). I’d like to think that he’d be amused by knowing that I decided to carry the Tuscan olive wood used for the turned handles with me on the plane and got caught by the Italian TSA agent that asked how I thought that carrying a wooden club with me on an airplane would be allowed.

It was clear to me: the tool had to be fully restored.

Before the restoration: dull, rusty blade and loose, broken handles

As I worked on other projects for the following months, I gave myself the permission to let the inspiration on how to restore the draw knife come to me naturally. I didn’t force it, but the more time passed, the more I realized that I was overthinking it. I was missing the point by not sticking to simplicity. I therefore started holding its handles, playing with it, looking to find a feel for the fit in my hand. The way it was originally repaired gave me an advantage, as grandpa replaced one of the broken short and stubby handles with a long and slender piece of scrap wood. Thank you, grandpa, for helping me prototype.

Thinking about him, I wanted it to feel like narrow paint brushes: slender, light, delicate and I realized I could almost see the tip of those brushes, dipped in paint, in the bottom of the handle. Was that poetic liberty or stretched imagination? I’ll leave it to you to decide.

I sketched a couple of ideas on my notebook, drew dimensions on the final design, retrieved the stock of olive tree that I had saved for this project and turned it on the lathe. The blade was next, receiving a complete polish, recalling the metaphor of a fresh coat of paint.

But then the detail that left me scratch my head the longest was the brass sleeve that connected the handle to the body: starting with plenty of ambition I imagined that I take a piece of brass tubing and turning it… on a metal lathe… that I don’t own. Back to the drawing board. It took me a few failed attempts to realize that I could just hack a copper piping nipple to achieve the same result. Eureka!

Here it was, the fully restored draw knife! I looked at the completed project for a few minutes, in silence, door closed in my small 10 square-feet studio. Vivid images of my childhood with my grandparents and family rushed behind my eyes like projected motion pictures. I smiled, satisfied and with my heart full, hung the draw knife up front and center of my tool-rack on the wall, took out my deck of cards and lost myself in the memories while playing the very solitaire that grandpa taught me.