In 2014, Bologna lost one of its greatest artisans. Luciano Occhi, a maestro of carpentry who honed his craft making mattarelli—pasta rolling pins—and taglieri—pasta boards—passed away at the age of 75. He was one of the last of Italy’s artisanal wooden pasta toolmakers. Called Geppetto by some for his ability to practically breathe life into inanimate wood, Luciano had an uncanny ability to craft mattarelli that felt like a natural extension of a pasta maker’s hands and taglieri that brought sfoglia to life.
Luciano’s genius wasn’t just in shaping wood. His job started with choosing the very trees that supplied his workshop. Like a truffle hunter (see page 225), he would track down the ideal tree trunk, from which he would cut planks. Next, he would cure them in an oven for a month at 195°F [90.5°C]. Only when Luciano judged the wood ready to carve was it guided into the calibrator to become a perfectly cylindrical mattarello. He also made flawless taglieri.
After he passed away, his son Davide Occhi transformed his pre-WWII workshop on Via della Ghisiliera 14 into a kind of museum. Davide lived in Milan at the time and worked for a bank, but devotion to his father’s craft, which he learned by his side, eventually led him back to Bologna. At first he would only come down on weekends to finish pieces his father had started. Then he returned permanently to Bologna to continue his father’s trade. Artisan mattarello making in the city may be reaching its end, but it’s not quite there yet.
