By Fr. Mike Mendl, SDB
Baltimore’s Federal Hill neighborhood is a lively one just south of the Inner Harbor. It’s home to middle-class homes, churches, popular restaurants and watering holes, boutiques, and other businesses ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Hill,_Baltimore). Right along Charles Street, the “main drag,” on the corner of W. Henrietta Street, you’ll find Artesanos Don Bosco, which might be described as a fashionable boutique for high quality wood furnishings and art in several media.
All of the furniture and art are crafted in the Peruvian Andes by young artisans (both men and women) trained in in a program founded by Italian Salesian missionary Fr. Ugo De Censi. The whole enterprise is sponsored by an association of Italian volunteers called Operation Mato Grosso, whose object is to help the poor in South America.
Naturally, the artisans need a market for their work, which is where the store in Baltimore comes in. Two or three times a year they receive a shipment of whatever the craftsmen in Peru have produced; the store will also order custom jobs.
The artisans themselves come from many villages in the Andes. They went to Salesian schools, sometimes far from their home villages, to get basic schooling and to learn a craft. The schools teach one or more of the following: carpentry, carving (both wood and stone), metalwork, painting, glasswork, wood inlay, weaving, and knitting.
Each piece is the basic work of one artist—no assembly line work! Some pieces do involve more than one craft, e.g., cabinetry and painting, and thus require a craftsman for each skill. Everything is handcrafted with basic tools. No nails are used in the assembly of the cabinets, beds, desks, chairs, etc.—just fundamental joinery such as dovetails and mortise and tenons, and occasionally some screws, according to Gianpaolo Ghezzi, who manages the store on Charles Street and greets visitors with a warm welcome.
Profits from the sales go back to the Andean artisans and the schools.
Artesanos Don Bosco has several attractive Web presences, e.g., https://www.artesanosdonbosco.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/pages/Artesanos-Don-Bosco/158999420789996 but depends mostly on favorable reviews in the press (of which there are quite few), word of mouth from satisfied customers, and walk-in business from visitors to Federal Hill.
To see samples of the furniture and art, both sacred and secular, available at Artesanos Don Bosco, go to the Facebook site above or to https://artesanosdonbosco.shutterfly.com/You may also write for a beautiful catalog of their sacred furnishings, which includes an explanation of the whole educational program: info@artesanosdonbosco.com