G.Lera plaster figurine and emigration museum

Museum of the plaster figurine and emigration G.Lera was established by the Municipal Administration of Coreglia Antelminelli in 1975.

The current exhibition of the museum is built from 1300 examples of plaster which for their representations, for their color and shape and, above all, for the way in which they were made, represent the technical evolution of this craftsmanship from 1600 to the days our. Among the objects of greater value and of considerable historical significance we remember: eighteenth-century kittens blackened with candle smoke, the original mask of Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, lost print busts.

Much of the vast range of subjects created by the figurines during their countless wanderings in every part of the world to meet the needs of all buyers find their place here. Thus in the various rooms of the museum we can admire the plaster reproduction of the most famous protagonists of the past from Napoleon to Garibaldi, from Dante to Petrarch, from the most famous German musicians to the characters of ancient Rome and Greek mythology, all made with such perfection technique to transform this craft into a minor art form. Ample space was dedicated to exhibiting, for educational purposes, the methods of working with gypsum in the absence of both glue and rubber. For all these reasons, the Coreglia museum is an obligatory stop for anyone wishing to know the various, specific phases of plaster manufacturing.

The "Museum of the plaster figurine and emigration" by Coreglia Antelminelli, unique in its kind, wants to be above all a center for studying what has been the way of being and organizing the emigration of the figurine over time, a center promoter of initiatives aimed at the representation and enhancement of the cultural physiognomy of a given community. And it is precisely in this meaning of cultural laboratory that his anthropological direction is expressed, his attention to the humble and enterprising "wanderer" who from one continent to another, manufacturing and selling plaster statuettes and bringing the fruit back home of his hard work and his multiform experience, he not only decided on the economic-social fabric, but also provided, locally, the conditions for a more composite and universal civilization.

Map: G.Lera plaster figurine and emigration museum