I. EXPERTS AND PUBLICATIONS

We were surprised at the limited number of experts and publications covering the life of Richard Blow and the history of his Montici workshop

Photo credit: Oregon State University

Only one, very short, public biography of Richard appeared during his life. It was included in a 1976 exhibition booklet entitled “Florentine and Richard Allman Blow” written by art historian Matila Simon and published by Oregon State University. The booklet is out-of-print and not available in bookstores or online. But our mother Rayanna helped the University prepare the catalogue (she is acknowledged in the preface), and we’ve posted on the Society website the copy we found in her library. This biography is frequently excerpted by art dealers and auction houses and provides the foundational material for most biographical sketches used by the art market.

Photo credit: Wright Auction

In 2019, Glenn Adamson produced the first significant biography published since Richard Blow’s death. It appears in the Wright Auction catalogue “From Medici to Montici” accompanying the historic 2019 Adam Edelsberg collection auction ($50 from Wright). His primary sources included fresh information gained by Edelsberg from interviews the collector conducted with Bruno Lastrucci, as well as conversations he had with former employees of Richard Blow who worked a dairy farm in Dutchess County, NY once owned by the artist.

In 2020, The Montici Society Directors added their own significant contribution -- information and insights into Richard’s life and career which you’ll find scattered throughout the pages of this website. Investigative journalist and Society Director Michael Schmicker spent 14 months digging through secondary sources, including historical newspaper records; military records, steamship and airplane manifests; college yearbooks; and Ancestry.com to piece together Blow’s extended family tree. In Europe, sister Rosemary personally interviewed Bruno Lastrucci; and met with the staff of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure to get their perspective on Richard and his work. Back in Connecticut, brother John combed through several large trunks of Blow memorabilia (photos, letters, notes, articles, drawings) collected by Muriel King, Richard’s close friend and former PR Director. He also researched family photographs and records illuminating the personal relationship our family enjoyed with Richard and his son back in the 1960s and 1970s.

We also created the first “Illustrated Biography” of Richard Blow, with the goal of appealing to a younger, visually-oriented audience.

Photo Credit: “Painting in Stone” Aska Publishers (2014)

The most accessible, layman’s book we’ve come across that explores Montici mosaics is Anna Maria Massinelli’s “Painting in Stone: Modern Florentine .” Published in 2015, it provides a fascinating and informative history of the craft from the turn of the 19th century until the first half of the 20th century. Unfortunately, it devotes only three pages specifically to Richard Blow and his Montici mosaics.

Photo credit: Opificio delle Pietre Dure, ,

In 2019, the Opificio, delle Pietre Dure published a wonderful exhibition catalogue, “Il Novecento per Il Museo dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure” that adds significantly to the limited historical material dealing with the Montici workshop. But it’s available only in Italian. We were able to translate it – and meet the Opificio’s knowledgeable staff – through our sister Rosemary. She has lived in Perugia, Italy for over 50 years, and speaks fluent Italian.

Meeting with experts and staff of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence, Italy, October 2019. From left to right: Renata Pintus; Sandra Rossi; John Schmuecker; Rosemary Schmuecker ; Annalisa Innocenti.

The Opificio staff alerted us to a 1958 documentary film featuring Richard Blow and his Montici studio. Entitled “Montici ,” this entertaining film was produced and directed by Academy Award-winning director Richard de Rochemont, a mentor of Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space ; The Shining). You can view it at the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington DC.

We uncovered no oral histories, and Richard Blow himself is now dead, as are his parents, brothers and sisters; his two former wives; and his sons Marco and David. To our knowledge, no one from the extended Blow family has published a public or private biography of Richard; or collected and donated his letters and to a university.

Our mother Rayanna had extensive conversations with Richard Blow over the decade she actively sold his art works; and long talks with his son David Blow, but she took no notes at the time. We did however end up with a trunk from Richard’s close friend, Muriel King, after she passed. It contained a number of letters, postcards, photos, and documents exchanged between her and Richard.

Meanwhile, we believe the last living link to how Richard operated his Montici workshop is Signor Bruno Lastrucci, whose whole family worked for Blow at Piazza Calda. Bruno started his apprenticeship in the Montici workshop at age 8; worked there in multiple capacities; personally executed many of Richard’s designs; and maintains a private Montici/Richard Blow historical archive in Florence, Italy. In 2017, he privately published a short, informative, autobiography describing his life and his years working for Richard. Blow. You can read Lastrucci’s fascinating autobiography here on the Society’s website. Bruno currently owns his own company I Mosaici di Lastrucci. If there is an expert on Blow and Montici mosaics, it is Bruno.

Rosemary and my mother first met Bruno at Richard’s villa during a visit they made to Italy in the late 1960s. A half-century later, in 2019 Rosemary and Bruno renewed their friendship, Bruno kindly shared with us his memories of Blow and Montici, and a copy of his short autobiography.

John Schmuecker and sister Rosemary (center) visiting with Bruno Lastrucci (far right) and son Iacopo and wife (far left) in Florence, Italy, October 2019.

When during our research we came across conflicting information about the Montici workshop and its operations, we deferred to Lastrucci’s memory and understanding; but any errors in this “Authentication and Valuation” section are our responsibility.

II. HOW RICHARD BLOW PRODUCED HIS ART

What’s so special about Florentine mosaics? Let’s take a look.

Cutting stone using a chestnut bow. Photo Credit: “Painting in Stone” Aska Publishers (2014)

The traditional was created using small squares of colored, soft stone or glass of roughly equal size and shape.

Pietra dura (‘hard stone), in contrast, is a uniquely Florentine type of mosaic, developed in the 16th century. Florentine pietra dura mosaics are created using harder, more expensive, semi-precious stones –like jasper, amethyst, onyx, jade, alabaster and . Each piece of mosaic is laboriously hand-cut, filed and shaped into irregular jigsaw pieces, then assembled into a “painting” in stone. The traditional Italian name for this art is “commesso fiorentino.” Richard Blow used the term “pietre Intarsiate” (Italian for “inlaid stones”) in his New York City gallery brochures, but pietra dura is the most common term used today in the American art world and in auction listings.

Above is a fragment of a Montici pietra dura plaque, used by my mother in her arts and antique dealership in Connecticut to show her clients how Montici plaques were made. You can see the two basic “wedding cake” layers. -- at the bottom is a piece of (speckled, light grey) that serves as a backing. The much thinner, delicately shaped, individual stone pieces of the artwork itself are arranged on top, and held in place by adhesive (traditionally beeswax).

Blow provided the original design to be executed in stone. He left the actual stone cutting, assembling and fitting of pieces, and polishing, to skilled stone artisans.

His Montici mosaics were extremely labor intensive, just like the original Medici -era artworks. No power machinery was used. It took anywhere from weeks to months to produce a single mosaic, per Blow biographer Glenn Adamson.

Menegatti workshop. Photo(Credit: “Painting in Stone” Aska Publishers (2014)

He started out in 1947 by paying long-established, high-reputation Florentine workshops to execute his innovative designs. Among the first and most frequently used were the workshops of Giuseppe Fiaschi, Renzo Fracassini, Leopoldo Menegatti, and Emilio Ugolini. Their names will pop up again and again in the context of authenticating Blow/Montici pieces.

“His primary objective was to sustain – including with a notable amount of money—the production of the workshops of this art still active, by buying expensive materials, and the guarantee of continuous commissions, even opening an important commercial channel with the States…”

Blow would typically give the workshop a sketch or “cartoon” (from the Italian word cartone, meaning a large sheet of ) of the design he wanted them to execute in stone – a lion, a butterfly, a centaur, a , etc. Blow and the head of the workshop, the maestro, would discuss the colors and shapes in the drawing; potential stones that might work; challenges that might arise in cutting and fitting the pieces; and cost and timetable.

Preparatory drawing. Photo credit: “From Medici to Montici:: Richard Blow and the Modern Pietre Dure” published by Wright Auctions, October 2019

In addition to a pencil sketch, the preparatory drawing could also be a painting.

Richard Blow “Lion Oil Painting” offered on EBay in October 2019. Size 15 x 27.5 inches, oil on canvas.

Blow typically gave the maestro latitude in selecting stones, and in execution. They were creative partners, influencing each other and the final product. “Following the first encouraging experiments, I gave complete autonomy to my artisans and I allowed them to work freely, limiting myself to ordering work based on my designs and buying these works produced by them.”

“Olivia’s Lion” NFS. 1968. Size 15.5 x 22 inches signed “Richard Blow, Montici, 68.” (Family collection)

Richard Blow ‘s Villa Piazza Calda. Photo Credit: Bruno Lastrucci

A few years later, Blow decided to build his own workshop, Montici, on the gorgeous grounds of his Villa, hiring a maestro to run his company and supervise a small team of artisans and apprentices. This gave him more direct, day-to-day control of the whole process, from start to finish. He brought to a stale, 19th century declining art a new iconography influenced by the modern art of De Chirico, Leger, Cubism and Surrealism, introducing fresh themes and designs never done in pietra dura before. And he was ruthless in tossing away pieces that didn’t measure up.

As art historian Matila Simon notes, “The perfectionist requirements of Richard Blow resulted in a series of pictures of dancing girls, still lifes, Iandscapes, birds, fish, animals, horses, mermaids, sea shells, flowers, fruits, guns, engines, balloons, all of them in and semiprecious stones. All of the pictures were worked over long and lovingly, subjected to the artist's final approval, honestly and faithfully made in the finest stones, and rejected if imperfect. When completed and accepted, each piece was marked with a tiny M stone insert as a Montici signature and signed on the back by Blow himself.

Blow picked his workshop directors carefully. He was no longer a solo painter. He was still the creative genius, but he now required a team of craftsmen, and needed to rely on a strong, trusted, talented maestro to manage them when he was traveling. Tensions could arise. The seasoned maestri Blow hired to run his Montici workshop brought their own egos and ideas, but Richard always retained the final say.

Meanwhile, Blow graciously continued to support other workshops in the city --giving them commissions and work when his Montici workshop couldn’t keep up with demand); and recruiting craftsmen from them when Montici had a vacant position.

Photo credit: Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence, Italy

Did Blow himself ever actually cut stone – make intarsia plaques himself? Improbable. In the 1951 book “Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today,” Blow is listed as both a “Designer” and “Producer” of his intarsia art. But if Blow did any stone cutting at all, it was most likely only in the beginning, to understand the process. Between designing, managing, marketing, traveling and running his business, he did not have the time to learn the difficult craft

Did Blow come up with every original design produced by Montici? No. He also solicited original designs via Montici-sponsored competitions; as well as directly from talented artists he respected, e.g. Massimo Campigli, and then produced and sold them under the Montici label. In a Blow letter archived in the Opifico, Blow writes “At this moment I give almost permanent work to all the best Florentine artisans who create mosaics based on my sketches and some other contemporary artists…” In this, Blow was following a long tradition of Florentine workshops, like the Arte dei Mosaico, and the Bencini and Bazzanti studios. They also marketed the work of independent mosaicists.

But nothing earned the Montici logo without Richard Blow’s personal approval.