Sculptor Giuliano Cecchinelli, surrounded by some of his work in granite, at Buttura & Gherardi Granite Artisans in Barre. Photo: Photo by Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

By Patrick Timothy Mullikin

Saint-like, 63-year-old Giuliano Cecchinelli offers his hands, palms up, for inspection. The palms are leather tough. Fingers and thumbs are calloused and crooked from 53 years of carving stone. But, says their owner proudly, they are pliable and never sore.

Cecchinelli scoffs at gloves; he likes to feel the stone. So did his father, one of 12 architectural stone workers from Carrara, Italy, whom the Vermont Marble Co. in Proctor brought to the United States in 1959 to work on the East Wing of The White House for John F. Kennedy's 1961 inauguration. So did his grandfather and his great-grandfather.

Sculpting, says Cecchinelli, has been a family vocation for at least 200 years, maybe longer. His oldest son, Giuliano, also sculptor, works for the Rock of Ages Corp. in Barre.

Brushing off thick granite dust from his clothes at his work studio at Buttura & Gherardi Granite Artisans, Barre, where he has worked independently since 1961, Cecchinelli says the company has changed hands a few times since he arrived on the scene as a 17-year-old fresh from Carrara. "I'm a piece of furniture here," he says with a laugh. "It's the only place I've ever worked."

Cecchinelli speaks softly, with a heavy accent, often ending his sentences with: "You understand what I mean?" He's not asking if you understand his speech but rather the nuances of his often-enigmatic remarks.

"That was my first spot," he says pointing across the floor of the busy plant to station No. 7. "Lucky No. 7." Today he occupies two stations that are cramped with works-in-progress, finished pieces and odds and ends. A dusty Italian flag hangs from a wooden beam.

His current work-in-progress is memorial featuring a kneeling angel. She's been roughed out a little on the granite stone, and a photograph taped to the memorial shows how she will look once completed. Cecchinelli, who has carved thousands of memorials in his time, already knows how she will look.

He's not one for accepting compliments or seeking publicity.

"People say, 'Oh, well, you got the ability and the talent.' It isn't so. To me anybody can do it (sculpting) if they want, as long as they apply themselves."

The decision to become a sculptor originated in art school in Carrara. "After the fifth grade you decide what you want to do. My interest was in art, so I went to art school. That's where I learned it all," he says.

Art school in Carrara, he explains, is nothing like art school here. "You do everything. You learn from ground zero. During his first years he told his instructors: 'I want to be a sculptor,' " he laughs. "No, no, no. It doesn't work that way. You do all sorts of things (first)."

Cecchinelli says he tried to bring that same type of discipline to the Stone Arts School at the Vermont Granite Museum of Barre, which, as board member, he helped found. (He is also a board member of the Vermont Historical Society and was instrumental in the purchase and restoration of the Old Labor Hall.)

"I used to teach (at the Stone Arts School); I had kids from 8 years old to 62," he says with a hint of remorse. "I've got my own … here they call it … vision. My vision was to precisely create the school where I came from, to recreate that school here." The museum board's reaction, he says, was lukewarm.

"They told me I wanted to reinvent education. Whenever I create something, I first do it, and then I'll show it to people." He may have scared off some of his students and distanced some fellow board members with his straightforwardness.

"I don't praise anything. When I used to teach, I never told a kid 'beautiful.' The ego is just like a balloon. (As an artist) anything is good to me. Everything is a piece of art. It doesn't matter what it is."

He is equally objective – or critical – of his own memorial work, which includes the model that was used in creating the Italian-American monument that stands in Barre's Dente Park. "It's not that I don't care; I care from the littlest job to the biggest job."

His personal work, which he exhibits, but rarely offers for sale, is a different matter.

In the studio of the Barre home he has shared with his wife of 36 years, Julia, he creates maquettes – clay models of what will become granite sculpture. On the lawn is one of his creations: a granite sculpture of Dicken's Pickwick character, book in hand. The piece is oddly out of place but at the same time looks as though it belongs there. His home studio is packed from floor to ceiling with maquettes, plaster molds and granite sculpture. In this cramped room are ideas in the works, jobs that were aborted midstream and everything in between.

Tucked away in wooden cases are the classic tools of his trade: the iron chisels that he brought to the United States when he was a teenager, calipers of all sizes and a brass machinette a punto, a pointing tool, that dates back to the days of Napoleon. The latter are used to transfer the dimensions of a small plaster model to the full-sized sculpture. He demonstrates how the tools are used. "I do everything the old way," he says. "I was taught with respect."

Have nearly 50 years of sculpting memorials affected his view of life and death?

"Death is part of living. I'm colder than the granite itself," he says in his typical enigmatic way.

"To me I'm glad when I get up in the morning, wake up, put my pants on and come to work. That's all. I don't wish or hope or plan. I never planned a thing in my life. I've got nothing to complain about. I wouldn't trade my place with anybody, no matter who the hell it is."



Patrick Timothy Mullikin writes regularly for The Sunday Magazine and is an editor at The Times Argus.