Italy also has its share of artistry, from winemaking and olive oil to leather goods and Murano glassware. For Japan, it’s sake brewing, ceramics, lacquerware, silks, and swordsmithing. Both countries have a nearly endless list of traditional arts.
Italy keeps its traditions alive by handing them down through family-owned businesses, much like Japan. The countries are similar in that each generation takes up the family trade, though in some cases lets go of exclusive control to build a large enterprise that drives an industry. Even then, however, the family’s high quality and traditions are preserved even as the business actively incorporates innovative elements from each successive era.
Skilled artisans loom large in both Italy and Japan, many of them spending decades of training and experience to hone their craft. The countries also tend to preserve the work of these great artisans as cultural treasures, which fosters a rich cultural daily life.
The most globally well-recognized of the Italian artisan traditions is probably fashion and design.
Many Italian fashion houses—brands like Ferragamo and Missoni—are still family-run, allowing them to retain their distinctive character as they pass their operations down generation after generation.
Prada is one of these, as well. The Prada family apparently started out as a high-end leatherworker before the founder’s granddaughter, Miuccia Prada, started incorporating her own groundbreaking ideas and designs to grow the business into one of the finest fashion brands in the world.
In an interesting twist that also seems to reflect her ambitious spirit, Miuccia Prada created the Fondazione Prada modern art complex to contribute to craftsmanship and culture. She even transformed an old distillery into a unique structure—painting it gold to ensure that nobody would miss it.
In stark contrast to the glittering gold exterior that shines in the sunlight, the tower was given the dark and foreboding name, “Haunted House”, displaying mementos from its former life as a distillery. Everything in the exhibit seems to give off a strange vibe that’s hard to describe—which kind of makes you feel like you’ve been trapped in another dimension. You lose all sense of time, and many people report being shocked at how much of it has gone by when they’re finished looking at everything. Interesting, right?
The Fondazione Prada building is more than a simple art gallery. It’s purposely designed as an experiential artistic space.
You’re made to shuffle, for example, through pitch-black hallways where you have to use your hands to feel your way. With no sense of where you’re headed in the darkness, some people report turning back without being able to press forward. If you do keep going, though, you’re suddenly met by a bright room full of colorful artistic pieces. The brilliant contrast to the short but seemingly endless dark tunnel you just passed through is an intense thing to experience.
It’s a place where you can encounter art that asks philosophical questions about things like time, memory, and our relationship to the natural world.
