The tradition lives on

Mauro and the workshop today

Mauro Testella is Basilio’s son, and like his father he is a cobbler. The workshop that was his father’s is now his. The photographer Claudio Dell’Osa has portrayed him at work and tells the workshop as a story handed from father to son: Mauro’s creations range from shoes to glasses, watches and hats.

In 2020 it was Mauro who asked the town to give his father’s tools and materials a home. That request is where the “Bottega di Vasì” you can visit at the MUST comes from.

The pupils

The workshop door was always open, and many came through it. One is Doriano Marcucci, a Montegranaro cobbler, who writes in his biography that he met Basilio in 2008 and on his blog calls himself the pupil of “the great master and cobbler” Basilio Testella. In 2011, at Micam in Milan, Mauro Testella and Doriano Marcucci gave a live demonstration together, “L’Arte della Scarpa”, presented as the continuation of what Vasì had done for years.

The documentary

In May 2022 the association Marche in Video released “Tra memoria e futuro: Montegranaro, le calzature, i suoi artigiani” (in Italian), a collective account made of ten interviews with local craftsmen. It runs 48 minutes. Interviews by Samuele Baccifava, filming and editing by Alberto D’Agostino, photographs by Gianfranco Mancini.

Tra memoria e futuroMarche in Video, 2022, 48 minutes. Opens on YouTube.

The workshop film

The film that opens this site, five minutes inside the workshop, is also on YouTube, on Matteo Testella’s channel, since September 2013 under the title “Bottega Vasì, artigianato di lusso”.

Bottega Vasì, artigianato di lusso5 minutes, 2013. Opens on YouTube.