Twenty-Two Degrees to Port

photo by Greg Mohr

Walking around the iconic Squero San Trovaso, I came upon this gondola which the workers there (known as "squerarioli") had tipped over onto her port side for maintenance.

Looking at her straight on from the front, I saw a gondola from an entirely new angle (something that doesn't often happen for me),
and I had to snap a picture.

As I stared at the photo later, I couldn't help but wonder
what the exact angle might be.
A little creative work with a protractor,
and I believe the angle to be 22 degrees from the horizon.

Oh, and that unusual conglomeration of stuff in the right-hand side
of the frame is very unique to Squero San Trovaso - you can see
 another angle of it in my post "The Wall at Squero San Trovaso"

If you want to see a larger version of the above photo, click on it.
There's so much to take in with this image.

The Wall at Squero San Trovaso

There are many things about Squero San Trovaso
that set it apart from other gondola yards.

It's by far the most photographed squero in Venice.
All the guidebooks include it as something to see that's truly Venetian.

It's an active yard, with something to see just about any time you stop by to watch.  Some activities can easily be seen from across the canal
(where most of the tourists go to peer across the water).
Seeing a couple guys turn a gondola up on one side by hand or a group of workers wrestle a boat out of the water on rollers are good examples. 

Other things are best appreciated from inside the place.

I should make it very clear, however, that most outsiders should not try
to get into the squero unless involved with a film crew that's made prior arrangements.

Remember - these guys are workers.
They've got work to do.

Imagine if a bunch of tourists with cameras decided to just "show up" at a construction site and try poking around, or if they stepped out of the elevator at a law firm and started trying to chat people up about "what it's like to be a lawyer".

However, if you're a gondolier who has a Venetian friend, the right attitude, some photos of your boats on your phone, and some lucky timing - you might just manage to get in the door.

I'm posting a few different photos here this month from just such a visit.

Walking around (and trying to stay out of everyone's way), I noticed a certain wall, which I'd seen a few hats on in previous years.

It was clear that the wall had received some attention since the last time I'd been there.

My friends, I give you: The Wall.

 

I imagine it started with one or two hats, and, well,

somewhere things got serious.

 

Now it reminds me of an old restaurant that my folks took me to

as a kid called "Bobby McGee's".

The only thing missing is a bent trombone and an old baby carriage.

 

What a beautifully chaotic work of art.

 

 

Just the Photo - San Trovaso Still Life

Under the Roof in San Trovaso

Venturing into the shop at Squero San Trovaso, 

I saw this beautiful wedding gondola, with the light from outside bouncing off of all her carvings.

There are only a handful of gondola yards in Venice.

These operations are usually specific to the gondola – as she is built and maintained using methods and materials that date back a century or more.

A “squero” takes it’s name from one of the tools that gondola builders use to measure with (a sort of “builder’s square”).

Squero San Trovaso seems to be in almost all the tourist guidebooks and is by far the most photographed of all the gondola yards in the city.

A lot of the work at Squero San Trovaso takes place outside, 

but there’s room for a few boats in the shop to receive extra special attention – no matter what the weather conditions may be.

Swingin' by San Trovaso

photos by Andrew McHardy

 

 

Gondolier, world traveler, Kiwi, and candidate for "most interesting gondolier in the world" - Andrew McHardy is back in Venezia.

 

He's been up and down the city's canals for two days now (taking to the water just as soon as he landed).

 

Here are a trio of shots he sent me of the famous Squero San Trovaso.

 

 

Just the Photo - Squero San Trovaso

photo by Tim Jones

Here's a nice shot taken recently from across the canal of 
Venice's most well-known squero.

The early boat builders in Venice were not from the lagoon - they were mountain people.
They came from the same place the wood came from.

That Tyrolean heritage is visible even today, in the architectural style of the buildings at Squero San Trovaso.

Marie's Blog

Recently I was fortunate to discover a great blog called
"Italy to Los Angeles and Back" by Marie Ohanesian Nardin, who has lived in Venice since 1987.

Marie has a terrific post on the varo of her husband's new gondola at Squero San Trovaso.  It links to a video on YouTube which covers the day nicely. 

This morning I had a fun time reading her newest post "Playful Differences & Similarities of Italian vs. American Life" - I kept laughing and nodding my head in agreement.

Thanks for sharing the varo with us, Marie.
Please give Roberto my campliments on such a beautiful gondola.

Squero San Trovaso - Inside the Shop

photo by Garrett Budwine

Squero San Trovaso on Emilia's Blog

photo by Emilia Mirazchiyska

Venice, canal scenes, gondola yards,
I can never get enough of such things.

Emilia's blog is one of the few places I go each day to see what's newly posted, and today I discovered a nice post with some photos of the city's most photographed boat yard - Squero San Trovaso.

Take a look, leave a comment, and then close your eyes and imagine working on a 36 foot boat in that storied yard.

In the Shop at Squero San Trovaso

photos by Garrett Budwine

While exploring Venice's most well-known gondola yard,

Garrett ducked into the workshop and took these photos.

The Venetian squero takes it's name from a sort of builder's square that's been used by shipwrights in the region for centuries. 

These places are best known for building gondolas, but the truth is that most squeri spend a lot more time servicing existing gondolas than they do building new ones.

Meet Garrett Budwine - who's provided the Gondola Blog with many great photos. This is a nice side-by-side view of a standard gondola (left) and a wedding gondola (right)

Squero San Trovaso has the distinction of not only being Venice's most well-known gondola yard, but also the most photographed.  In fact I've posted lots of my own photos of the place here. 
As a gondola fanatic and a photographer, a place like that is what we might call a "target-rich environment".

Squerariolo

photo by Garrett Budwine
The craftsmen who work in a squero (gondola yard) are known as "squerarioli".
Garrett caught this image of one such person in the shop at Squero San Trovaso. These guys perform all sorts of different tasks.
Anyone want to guess what this guy does?

Getting to the Bottom of Things

photos of this segment courtesy of John Kerschbaum at Gondola Romantica.

As gondola operators, we spend a lot of time and attention making sure things look good and function well above the waterline. But anyone who's ever taken care of a boat knows that if you don't keep the "underwater part" in shape...soon the whole boat will become the "underwater part."

The trick, sometimes, is getting access to that part of the boat. First, you must remove the boat from the water - that's a given. For discussion sake, I'm going to focus our attention today on rolling the boat over on her side. Sure, it's possible to raise the boat up on stands or blocks to get to the bottom, but the Venetians typically choose the lateral roll, so that's what lots of gondola owners in other places do too.

In my recent post "Hoisting with Passengers", Bepi of Sunset Gondola left a great coment; part of it was "when it comes to how the Venetians prop up very large vessels for repair, with a few sticks and wood blocks, I stay far away."

Indeed, anyone who's spent any time around a Venetian squero or rowing club knows what Bepi is talking about.
Photos of one such display can be viewed in June 14th, 2008's post "The Red Racing Gondola".
And actually, the club members who propped that boat up used a lot more support than most Venetian boat-proppings I've seen.

John Kerschbaum in Minnesota has a fairly routine ritual of boat prep that he and his staff go through each year as launch time approaches.

Here we see that attention is paid to both the outside and the inside of that part of the boat which sits in the water.
establishing a support system that can be trusted is important not only for the safety of your boat, but for you and anyone else who might be sitting, crouching or assuming any other positions near the boat that might prevent you from leaping away from a falling boat. planks or poles to prop-up, as well as straps or ropes to tether-down, are both useful and can make a big difference in the time and energy put into a job (knowing that your gondola is less likely to "decide she wants to go somewhere" on her own).

Of course it's important to show your underwear while performing such an operation too.

Now let's take a look at how they do things in Venezia.

this photo sequence by Bob Easton
Here are two images from a series of photos Bob shot from across the canal known as the Rio di San Trovaso as some squerarioli tipped up a gondola at Squero San Trovaso. The full series was posted in mid-August of 2008 and is entitled "Recent Activity in Squero San Trovaso"

After pulling the gondola out of the water using metal rollers that can be placed on the ground, the guys placed a small sawhorse (known as a "cavalletto") under the prow and rolled the boat over, placing a plank diagonally like the kick-stand on a bicycle to keep her up.

The squerarioli demonstrated with this boat, and then another (in Bob's full sequence), how easily a group of guys can move these boats around if they know what they're doing.

Up in Denmark, Simon Bognolo and his father maintain their gondola "Stephania" with dedication...and a clever use of old tires! Here's a photo from their spring launch-prep.

photo by Simon Bognolo

To view the website for Denmark's only operating gondola, go to: http://gondol.dk/

Meanwhile, sometimes a gondolier hasn't got a crew of guys or a trusty piece of lifting equipment.

Sometimes you've just got to get creative.

Sometimes you've got to employ unusual things to get the job done.

I couldn't publish a post here about tipping and lifting gondolas without including this masterpiece.

photo by Robert Dula

Many of you probably remember seeing this image and reading or taking part in the "What the HECK Happened Here?!" forum in March of this year.

Roberto, who has recently re-launched an operation in New Orleans gets the official Gondola Blog "MacGyver Award" for his use of:

a small floor-jack,

giant beach ball,

and a shop-vac set on "blow".

I hope you've all enjoyed and possibly even learned something from this study of a unique boat-rolling procedure. If anyone has stories, photos, or video of their own on the subject - I'd love to see them.

At the end of the day, we're all just figuring stuff out together.

Squero San Trovaso - "Stacks for Seasoning"

A gondola building yard in Venice is known as a "squero".
Each one is a separate entity - they are often associated with the families who run them.
Every boat built in Venice represents the craftsmen who built her and each gondola carries on the legacy of the squero she was built in. Family names like Tramontin, Bonaldo, Crea, and dei Rossi are known throughout Venice. Gondoliers can be heard arguing over which is best. They talk about durability, design, finish, and how a boat handles. Each builder does their best to excell in these and other categories. Traditional gondola builders recognize the importance of having the right materials to build from.
Some might say that the most experienced builder, with the best design, and the highest standards...would still put forth an inferior boat with the wrong wood.

Just like their tools, squero owners take their wood seriously, they are particular about things, and will store it on their property to "season" before using it. I'm sure they have interesting opinions about how long the wood should weather, or "rest" before being incorporated into a project.

In the above photo we see a nice large stack of wood resting at Squero San Trovaso. Only the builders know where each piece will eventually end up.

For more information and musings on the subject, see my post from March 1st entitled "Squero San Trovaso - Wood to Weather"

Squero San Trovaso - Graphic Photos of a Naked Wedding Gondola

Forgive me, but I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to post up with such an attention-grabbing and cheezy title.

As many of you know, I'm a big fan of "wedding gondolas".
We took an in-depth look at theses special boats on April 25th in my post What is a "Wedding Gondola?".

These gondolas, with their hand-carved decks, need to be hauled out and serviced just like other gondolas.
I shot these photos at Squero San Trovaso.
All removable pieces had been stripped from the boat, including brass accents.


The carvings on a wedding gondola can be compared to tattoos, in that they often reflect the personality of the boat owner, and while there are popular styles which adorn many gondolas, no two are exactly alike.

The guy who commissioned this gondola obviously had a thing for scrollwork with sweeping curves.

He also went ahead and paid for the "whole package" by having the intagiadòr carve the boat's rails as well.

In this age of assembly-line production, our eyes have grown accustomed to seeing multiple versions of the same thing, whether it be in cars, shoes, or even houses. In some ways I think our minds desire this kind of order, but our hearts long for a special, unique, and one-of-a-kind "genuineness".

Squero San Trovaso - Even the Pusioli Get Worked On

Walking through the yard at Venice's most well-known squero,
I came upon this arm piece. These things come in pairs - one on each side of the passenger area. Often they are only held in place by the cavalli, which mount to the boat by way of a long rod that fits through each arm piece in the front.

There are many styles of pusioli.
This one looks like it may have come in on the rails of a wedding gondola, or one that's got some luxury appointments.

So while the gondola was being worked on, so was the arm piece, on little saw horses that look like they've probably got some stories of their own to tell.

As far as I can tell, pusioli are purely aesthetic.
Apart from providing a minor level of protection from crosswinds, these arm pieces seem to only be there to dress up the gondola. But they sure do that job well.
Often these and other parecio pieces will continue to dress gondola after gondola, living longer than the twenty to twenty-five years that most gondolas in Venice operate.
But like anything else made of wood, they need maintenance.

Squero San Trovaso - "There's a Hole in the Floor!"

Part of the gondola building and maintenance process requires squerarioli to flip the boat over so they can get to the underside.

You'd think they would do this all above ground, but no, not the Venetians.

They dig a hole in the floor so the whole operation is lower to the ground.

Sure, you could set up planks, and do all your work from higher up, but for various reasons they prefer this method.

I'm just spitballing here, but do you think some old grouchy gondola builder fell off a plank centuries ago and made a new rule from that day forward? It could happen.

With a sprained ankle and a bruised ego, an angry guy with a shovel could dig a hole pretty quickly.

Squero San Trovaso - Wood to Weather

I remember hearing a story once about an old American Indian elder who went into the forest with his grandson to choose a tree branch that they could carve into a flute.
After selecting the right one, they cut the branch from the tree and brought it back home. The boy prepared his hand tools, eager to begin crafting the branch into a musical instrument, but the old man stopped him, saying:
"wait, we need to let the wood rest a while".

When I heard that story I was much younger, and to be honest I just figured it was one of those Native American spiritualism things. Over the years though, as I've spent some time getting to know wood and it's many personality traits, I've realized that there was a much more practical side to what the tribal elder said to his grandson.

Wood grows, solid and strong as part of a living organism.
It is well hydrated, maintaining a certain amount of moisture.
Then, when the tree comes down and the wood is cut into boards, the whole world changes for those tightly knit cellulose fibers.

When wood comes to Venice and is delivered at a squero, the boards are laid out carefully to "season". The squerarioli who use them want to make sure the boards have gotten any movement out of their system. When wood is immediately used, it can sometimes do strange things. It can have a mind of it's own, bending or splitting in ways that could affect the bouyancy of a vessel.

Visit any squero in Venice and you're likely to see wood "resting", before it finds new life as part of a beautiful boat. In english speaking circles some say "let's allow the wood to weather a bit first".

The wood you see in this stack may very well be the same wood you see a few years from now - fashioned into different parts of a magnificent gondola, all black and shiny as she glides down the Grand Canal.

I wonder if it will miss being part of a tree then.
perhaps I'm attributing too much personality to the wood.
Or maybe it's that tiny sliver of Chippewa Indian in me coming out from high up in my own family tree.

Squero San Trovaso - Wrapped-Up Rowing Gear

I've seen this before:
the forcola, remo, and dock-lines from a gondola - all wrapped together.
It's a great way to keep them together, and while a forcola and remo in Southern California are quite unique, in a squero like San Trovaso, I can see the need to keep them together.
Each gondolier has his own rowing gear.
Imagine how easily a forcola could get lost in a place like San Trovaso or one of the other squeri.
Rowing clubs often do similar things to keep the rowing gear for each boat together.

If you have a sharp eye, you might be able to spot the lucky horseshoe in the shot.

I'm Feeling Lucky

While this photo might look like it came from a place like Montana or Texas, it was actually taken at Squero San Trovaso.

Walking around the yard, stepping betwen gondolas and equipment, I spotted this lucky horseshoe tacked to the side of one of the buildings.

We think of horseshoes on walls and above doorways as a typical scene from the American Southwest, but they've been pinning them to walls and doorways in Europe for centuries.

Among the many superstitious beliefs associated with these crescent-shaped pieces of iron, is that "a witch cannot pass under it".

I don't know if it's true, but I didn't see any witches in the squero that day.

I guess I should count myself lucky.

Squero San Trovaso - Balcony in Bloom

Here's a shot I took of the residence in Squero San Trovaso in spring. Just like the mountain homes in Il Cadore, the balcony has flowers along it's rail.