Happy New Year – tanti auguri!

Another year gone – another year of life disappearing over the horizon with all it hazards and chances.

A thousand thanks to everyone who looked in on The Phraser over the year.  Your company and your feedback make The Phraser.

I would also like to mention especially, those who have allowed me over the past year to interview them or feature their work.  It is such a privilege to have the chance to profile the parts of life that have caught my eye.

Here are a few links to some of the 2014 Phraser ‘portraits’:

Continue reading

The hands in every glove

Father and son - the fourth and fifth generations of the Squillace family

Father and son – the third and fourth generations of the Squillace family of Omega srl (with the founders in the background)

Italy equals leather in the same way that England equals gardens.  In Rome and Florence well-ordered workshops are easy to find on the main tourist streets – in Naples, amongst the best in business especially for gloves, there is no sign.

Naples never hands anything to you.

The maps app took us to the exact address and … nothing.  No shop window, no big sign, no smell of leather, no sounds of tapping and stitching, no gloves.  We were up in the top end of the city and Omega srl had vanished.

Continue reading