name: Mandolino
craftman: Tiziano Rizzi
date: May 2018
project assistant: Ilaria Basso
photo credits: Alessia Di Santo

Only a few musical instruments – and the mandolin is one of them – manage to symbolise an entire country. In this case the country is Italy, and one city in particular: Naples.

With this project, the mandolin “liberates” itself from the gilded cage of symbolism and Italian folklore, of Pulcinella strumming at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius: an instrument in a contemporary way, cleaning it up and tuning its volumes, stripping away any kind of redundant decoration, reinventing a slim, streamlined headstock (the part at the end of the fretboard, which contains the tuning pegs), with the same width as the nut.

This project became a reality thanks to the work of the instrument maker Tiziano Rizzi and his team, composed of Marcos Canova and Fabio Bonardi.

Tiziano believed in the project from the start, and provided his great artistic prowess to transform it into an excellent instrument, with an unexpectedly rich timbre and remarkable acoustic quality.

Not very many young people today would consider learning to play a traditional mandolin; the gap between the aesthetic world in which they are immersed and this instrument so laden with signs, decorations and forms is just too big: therefore, this new mandolin can be appealing for still younger generations, who may be tempted to approach the instrument, also thanks to its clean, contemporary design.