 Lightness from stone: Leccese Sculptor Renzo Buttazzo
Try as he might, contemporary artist and craftsman Renzo Buttazzo can't leave Lecce. Though he's enjoyed travelling and working in India, the Far East and the US, something always pulls him back to his hometown. He puts it down to the quality of the local stone, and the softness and warmth that allows him to work with, rather than against, the stone to create pieces of sensuality and purity.
Called 'leccisu' or 'tufigna', Lecce stone is a soft white or yellow limestone produced as a result of thousands of years of pressure on local sea-mud. Its origin explains the presence of so many fossils in the stones that are quarried from Salento, the province surrounding Lecce.
Since the Middle Ages artists and artisans have taken advantage of the malleability of the Leccese stone. Today Renzo works only by hand, and with the same traditional tools as used hundreds of years ago by the Baroque stonecutters, tools that today we associate with carpentry: 'scalpello' (scalpel), 'martello' (hammer) and 'raspa' (rasp).
His creations are practical but beautiful pieces - bowls, lamps, candlesticks that resemble coral. Though made of stone they are delicate, light, and serene, with a look of coral that links the stone back to its own origins - the sea.
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Find out more about the environment that so inspires the artists and visitors to Puglia.
No coral reef, but some pretty amazing underwater scenery.
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