Glacial Errata, No. 56

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Another thing one can find in the Cesare Lombroso Museum of Criminal Anthropology that I found utterly captivating is the work of Eugenio Lenzi. Once again, information on Lenzi is scarce (at least in easily accessible sources online and in English; I haven’t been able to delve too deeply beyond that at the moment), but he was admitted to Fregionaia Hospital in Lucca, outside Turin, sometime in the second half of the nineteenth century. While there, he apparently picked up woodworking, producing a stunning collection of work that the Lombroso Museum now has on display.

These pieces are a sight to behold; fantastically detailed, layered out of a variety of different wood types and colors, the obvious labor of untold hours, and a record of true achievement.

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The accompanying text describes Lenzi’s pipe as being “perhaps the more paradoxical work amongst the specimens of the museum: a simple figurative language, but a fantastically energetic piece hinting at information about distant worlds….”

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It’s a bit hard to classify exactly what kind of furniture these pieces are. Like the pipe, they seem almost to have started out fairly utilitarian, but became more and more elaborate, with more and more accessories and attributes added and refined until the actual purpose of the piece is lost under such proliferations and endless reworkings.

Furniture not as utilitarian objects, but as an endless expression of a mind constantly at work.