Permanent exhibition
“from ironworks to amaretti factories”
The activity of the ironworks, which continued in Sassello from the fifteenth century until after the mid-nineteenth century, was of great importance for the town and led it to significant economic development, which corresponded to a civil growth evident in the urban layout, in a not insignificant literary culture, and in the creation of institutions typical of an advanced community.
The ironworks of Sassello were a total of seven, of which up to six were in simultaneous production. Their location was favored by the abundance of wood for making charcoal and streams to provide driving power.
When fossil coal was not yet being extracted—because religious prejudices led people to consider it a diabolical product since it came from the bowels of the earth—the smelting of metals, and especially iron, was done with charcoal. Forests therefore had great importance for that pre-industrial activity, and the forest resources of many European regions were depleted before the aforementioned prejudices were overcome.
Sassello was favored in steel production by its extensive forested area, which had also been wisely protected since 1546 by a decree that meticulously described 21 slopes, which were high-forest woods located on the ridges, where it was strictly forbidden to cut down trees in order to protect the proper growth of the underlying coppices from the sirocco winds.
The activity of charcoal production took place during the June-September period, characterized by scarce rainfall and the possibility for the charcoal burners to live in the woods in makeshift huts to follow the wood carbonization process, which required constant supervision.
The wood used came from coppices of beech, oak, and wild chestnut. The most valuable charcoal was produced from beech and oak wood, which had a higher specific weight. Unseasoned wood was preferred because its high moisture content allowed for cooking without accelerated combustion. The average yield was 1 kg of charcoal for every 5 kg of wood.
The transport was carried out in canvas sacks with a capacity of one mina (a measure for grains corresponding to 0.116 cubic meters), so the actual weight of the sack, which was around 25 kg, varied depending on the specific weight of the charcoal placed inside. At that time, it was the knowledge of the identity of the forest from which the charcoal came that determined its price.
In the eighteenth century, there were disputes over the size of the sacks and it was up to the Community Agents to determine the exact measurements of the sacks suitable for containing a mina of coal.
The ironworks operated using the so-called "low fire" method, in contrast to those used in the modern steel industry based on blast furnaces.
The production of iron took place by smelting the ore, which came from the island of Elba, obtained by placing the ore itself in contact with charcoal in a smelting furnace (not very tall and for this reason called a low hearth). The combustion of the charcoal at a very high temperature freed the ore from oxides and caused it to agglomerate into a spongy mass called a bloom, which was then reduced to bars by hammering it with trip hammers. These were powered by hydraulic energy obtained by channeling the water from streams to a wheel that set them and the bellows in motion, which blew air into the smelting furnace, creating the high temperature necessary for smelting.
This production method, which was the ancient one already used by the Etruscans in small furnaces and then gradually perfected, was also called "direct" because the iron was obtained with a single smelting operation.
The high consumption of charcoal (which required about 25 kg of wood for every kg of iron produced) led countries poor in timber like England and those endowed with this natural resource to use fossil coal. The walls of the smelting furnaces were raised, which first became shaft furnaces and then blast furnaces, in which the ore was arranged in alternating layers with layers of fossil coal. However, in these furnaces the ore
it did not become a spongy mass, but flowed in a fluid state. It was cast iron, very brittle and not very ductile or malleable due to the excess carbon it contained. When the problem of removing carbon from cast iron was solved, steel was obtained. This method, based on the use of two different furnaces to obtain the product required by the market, was called "indirect".
The use of fossil coal freed steel production from the need to locate factories near forests, and the invention of steam engines also freed it from the need to use the hydraulic energy of streams.
The steel industry had co
it had been modernized and had made the production of the ironworks obsolete.
Around 1850, the ironworks ceased their activity (unfortunately, the industrial complexes were later converted into houses or destroyed, so today only a few structures are visible), while the production of charcoal continued intensely until the mid-1900s (even today, walking through our woods, you can admire the circular clearings that once hosted them).
They had provided work and relative well-being to a large part of the country's active population for over four centuries. In fact, the workforce revolving around each ironworks was estimated at about one hundred individuals: eight to ten ironworkers, around forty charcoal burners, and as many people divided among the muleteers, who transported the ore from Albisola and brought back the finished product, and those who carried sacks of charcoal on their shoulders from the woods to the ironworks, among them women, the elderly, and children.Thus, the transition was made from a pre-industrial economy to a predominantly agricultural one—some activities such as silk mills, linked to the cultivation of silkworms, favored by the large number of mulberry trees, and the production of plant extracts used in leather tanning and the dyeing industry, tied to the exploitation of forests, had little success and lasted only a short time; only a cotton weaving mill lasted until the early decades of the current century—where the main resource was chestnut harvesting.
Artisan activities also flourished, such as the workshops of shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, blacksmiths, and mills.
But the activity that has given the town the most notoriety after that of the ironworks is the confectionery industry, better known for the production of "amaretti".
Its origins are quite curious; in fact, this activity became established in a strip of land between Liguria and Piedmont—Savona, Sassello, Acqui Terme, Mombaruzzo, Gavi, and Voltaggio—quite far from the areas where sweet and bitter almonds and apricot kernels (Puglia, Campania, Sicily, and Sardinia), which are the main ingredients of this exquisite dessert, are produced.
Geltrude Dania in Rossi "invented" them in the second half of the last century for her exclusive personal use in that house which today is Bar Yole.
Commercial production began with very modest means in a small shop with the purely invented name "Virginia," as there was never any Virginia in the Rossi family.
It was Pietro Rossi who, having succeeded his mother in 1890, gave impetus to the small family business by extending the sale of the cake along the Riviera.
The product met with unanimous approval and was able to boast many medals and diplomas.
Upon the death of Pietro Rossi in 1923, while his son Adamo continued the "Virginia" factory, his other son Enrico founded the "Vittoria" factory.
Production continued with an almost exclusively regional distribution in the period between the two world wars.
But significant development was to be recorded in the 1950s, during which the companies "Isaia" and "Giacobbe" were founded, especially in the following decade when the rise of the consumer society gave great impetus to the food and confectionery industry itself.
In the 1960s, two new companies were established: "La Sassellese" and "Ligure Dolciaria".
New products were then added to the amaretti, mainly canestrelli and baci di dama, which allowed for wider commercialization and the achievement of an industrial scale.
The number of employees, which in the 1960s was about fifty, has now almost tripled.
All six factories mentioned are still in full operation and some have even conquered international markets, especially those of the European Community.
The permanent exhibition set up in the basements of Palazzo Perrando aims to be that meeting point between industrial production and the activities carried out by arts and crafts over the last six hundred years of local history, thus representing the various activities that have characterized the entire town.
The section is divided into three rooms:
The first, dedicated to the ironworks, where they tried, using the few remaining artifacts and various explanatory panels, to reproduce its activity;
The second, being a corridor that leads into the amaretti room, is meant to represent precisely that point of transition between the two main activities, namely the arts and crafts that have gradually developed in the village; in the room, which is modest in size and therefore not suitable for housing all the collected material, various ethnographic themes will alternately be displayed every two or three years. This is precisely to better highlight the importance of all those crafts that we hope can flourish again. We have dedicated this room to the late artisan Ernesto Caviglia, who was able to interpret with great professionalism the many "artisan trades" he practiced.
The third, dedicated to the amaretto factories where, thanks to the generous donations of equipment from local entrepreneurs, the production environment has been reconstructed, taking us back in time to the use of the first machines.
A self-taught man from Sassello, Luigi Bazzano (1849-1940), left us a significant dialectal poem in which the activity of the charcoal burners is described with the vividness of images that only someone with direct knowledge could provide.
Up in the woods Up in the woods there was
people as thick as fingers,
you should have seen it:
they looked like so many ants.
All these black people
who looked like so many devils
turned out to be just as good
if you talked to them.
All this work,
all this confusion
lasted as long as
the charcoal was being produced.
(in the first decade of August 1990, the Friends of Sassello Association produced
a charcoal kiln in what was then the Park of Palazzo Perrando, home of the Museum)
Carbonaie Poetry
