The Lucca “Fugurani” Tradition. Before I get started, a massive shout out to the people who have taken the time to document the history that I have summarised below. All my Sources can be found at the bottom of the page – please do go have a look. And if any of you visit the museum, I would love to know more!!
For roughly 200 years (18th to 20th century), a cluster of villages in the Serchio Valley north of Lucca, Tuscany (see above) — principally Bagni di Lucca (Google Maps), Coreglia Antelminelli (Google Maps), and Barga (Google Maps) — produced generations of “figurinai”: plaster/gypsum figure makers who left as itinerant craftsmen and salesmen, travelling in organised groups with a defined division of labour, to sell plaster figurines across Europe and later the Americas. In the period 1866-1873 alone, 592 figuristi emigrated from Bagni di Lucca specifically (557 from Barga, 484 from Coreglia). This was not poverty-driven emigration — the area was relatively prosperous and educated; it grew out of an existing tradition of seasonal winter craft production and summer travelling sales that gradually extended further afield as transport improved.
Emigration to Britain specifically is documented from as early as the 1840s-1850s, with figure-making communities recorded in London, Glasgow (heavily from Barga), Leeds, and York. Genealogy forums are full of British families tracing ancestors described on census records as “plaster figure maker” or “statuary,” almost always traced back to this same handful of villages.
One example is Felice Bacci and he is not an isolated case, he’s a direct, late-generation continuation of a 150-plus-year-old emigrant craft tradition, arriving in Britain right as the tradition’s last major wave (matching the 1930s emigration of Antonio Carli (and I suspect Egisto Carli), also from Bagni di Lucca, founder of the Carli Frères casting house in Belgium. Felice Bacci and Antonio Carli are very likely part of the same emigration culture, quite possibly even connected through extended family, business contacts, or at minimum a shared home-town network, even though one ended up in Manchester and the other in Brussels.
FURTHER RESEARCH
Primary institutional source for further research: the Museo della Figurina di Gesso e dell’Emigrazione (Museum of Plaster Figurines and Emigration), Via del Mangano 17, Coreglia Antelminelli, Lucca, Italy — founded 1975, holds 1,300 plaster specimens plus a genealogical/family-
history research archive specifically for descendants of Coreglia-area emigrants.
Key reference books (Italian language, likely available via Italian antiquarian booksellers or the museum itself):
- Maria Lera, “Gipskatter, Gatti di Gesso,” Maria Pacini Fazzi editore, Lucca, 1986
- Paolo Tagliasacchi, “Coreglia Antelminelli, Patria del Figurinaio,” Comune di Coreglia Antelminelli, 1990
- Paolo Tagliasacchi, “Figurine e Figurinai nel XX secolo,” Comune di Coreglia Antelminelli, 2002 — described as containing collected biographies, family stories and family trees of figurinai families;
SOURCES / REFERENCES
– Fazzi.nl, “Figuristi di Gesso” (figurinai history, emigration statistics 1866-1873):
– Visit Tuscany, “The plaster figurines of Coreglia Antelminelli”: https://www.visittuscany.com/en/crafts/the-plaster-figurines-of-coreglia-antelminelli/
– Atlas Obscura, “Museum of Plaster Figurines and Emigration”: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/museum-of-plaster-figurines-and-emigration
– Quilietti.com, “The Figurine Makers” (includes genealogy comment threads from UK descendants of figurinai families): http://www.quilietti.com/1-the-figurine-makers/
– ItalianGenealogy.com forum threads on figurinai emigration to UK: https://italiangenealogy.com/forum/italian-genealogy/2329 and
https://www.italiangenealogy.com/forum/locations-in-italy/30020
– Sistema Museale Territoriale della Provincia di Lucca, Guglielmo Lera Civic Museum of Plaster Figurines and Emigration:
https://museiprovincialucca.it/en/musei/guglielmo-lera-civic-museum-plaster-figurines-and-emigration
Note on source quality: the figurinai/Lucca material comes from genuine cultural-heritage and museum sources (comparable in reliability to the DAAO material used for Barsony), not collector blogs.
Apologies in advance if some links fail, but do let me know so I can try rectify.
And big thanks again to those webmasters of the sites above. If you object to me referencing your site, just drop me a line and I’ll fix it.
You must be logged in to post a comment.