Anno/Year 2023
222 pagine/pages
illustrato/illustrated
15x21 cm.
ISBN 9788833841588
€18.00
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Altre pubblicazioni di Emilio Gabbrielli
Polenta e Goanna
Racconti di fine secolo
Polenta and Goanna
La storia di un Fioraio artigiano di Firenze
Settemila anni di storia della dissalazione dell'aqua di mare
The 7000-Year Story of Seawater Desalination
Emilio Gabbrielli
The story of an artisan Florist in Florence
At the end of the day, Florence has always been a small city in a physical sense. The Viali di Circonvallazione that replaced the Renaissance walls enclose the city centre within a circle three kilometres in diameter. Over time the different generations, even of a humble Florentine family like the Gabbriellis, must perforce have interacted continually with the city’s major events and upheavals and its great personalities.
With his family’s centuries of experience as gardeners at Villa Papiano behind him, Emilio Gabbrielli opened an artisan florist shop in the centre of Florence in 1902 and moved there to live, followed by one of his brothers, Giovanni, who went to work as a sculptor in the Opificio delle Pietre Dure. Straight away Emilio began growing plants and flowers for the shop in the centre of town, and found himself treading the same soil in the garden in Piazza San Marco where – at a time when one of Emilio’s ancestors was probably already working as a gardener at Villa Papiniano, then owned by the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli – Lorenzo the Magnificent had sent Michelangelo to study at Bertoldo’s sculpture school.
Emilio’s wife Chiarina spent her childhood taking goats to pasture in the harsh terrain of the Appenines from morning to night; later, she found herself caught up in an international scandal involving Princess Marie-Louise of Habsburg-Lorraine, wife of the last king of Saxony. The later generations of Gabbriellis worked in the service of the Misses Barlow, upper-class Englishwomen who followed Queen Victoria on one of her stays in Florence and decided to remain there. Meanwhile Chiarina’s sister’s husband and his brothers became Florence’s most important theatrical entrepreneurs, and presented popular stage shows in the local vernacular.
The florist shop, by now well established, survived Emilio’s premature death and finally came down to his son Maurizio. After making it through the war thanks to the generosity of a small group of Greek soldiers, Maurizio looked beyond the walls of the city and married Valeria, the barista daughter of farmhands from Modena countryside, the Bassa Modenese. It was Valeria, working in the shop with Maurizio right to the end, who researched the Gabbrielli family tree. The story of the florist shop ended with her, in 2008.
Emilio Gabbrielli nasce a Firenze nel 1948. Dopo la laurea in Ingegneria Chimica e un diploma post-laurea presso l’Università di Bologna prosegue, con il supporto dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, le ricerche iniziate con la tesi di laurea in collaborazione con l’Università di Milano.
Il suo interesse al problema dell’acqua lo porta a intraprendere una carriera in questo settore, incentrata nello specifico sulla dissalazione. Oltre che in Italia, ha vissuto in Perù, Australia, Inghilterra, Brasile e Svezia e lavorato per lunghi periodi in altri paesi. Tra il 2003 e il 2008 è stato Segretario Esecutivo della Global Water Partnership, iniziativa della Banca Mondiale, Programma delle Nazioni Unite per l’Ambiente e Governo Svedese per promuovere la gestione sostenibile delle risorse idriche.
Emilio ha scritto numerosi articoli tecnici e collabora regolarmente a riviste e pubblicazioni. È spesso relatore in occasione di eventi.
Accanto alla carriera professionale, ha perseguito i suoi interessi creativi come pittore e scrittore. Il romanzo storico Polenta e Goanna, finalista del Premio Arcangela Todaro-Faranda (Bologna, 1998), è stato pubblicato da Pontecorboli nel 2000. La traduzione in inglese di Barbara McGilvray è stata pubblicata da IPOC nel 2008 e una nuova edizione da Pontecorboli nel 2021.
Ha vinto premi in Australia per alcuni racconti e per l’atto unico Yvonne. Nel 2016 Pontecorboli ha pubblicato una raccolta dei suoi racconti con il titolo Racconti di fine secolo e nel 2022 ha pubblicato il suo libro di memorie familiari, La storia di un Fioraio artigiano di Firenze, seguito nel 2023 dalla traduzione inglese di Barbara McGilvray.
Emilio Gabbrielli was born in Florence in 1948. After graduating from the University of Bologna with a degree and post-graduate specialisation in Chemical Engineering, he won support from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei to continue the research he had begun with his thesis, in collaboration with the University of Milan.
His interest in the problem of water led him to a career in this field, focusing specifically on desalination. As well as in Italy, he has lived in Peru, Australia, England, Brazil and Sweden and worked for long periods in other countries. Between 2003 and 2008 he was Executive Secretary of the Global Water Partnership, an initiative of the World Bank, the United Nations Environment Programme and the Swedish Government to promote the sustainable management of water resources.
Emilio has written numerous technical articles and is a regular contributor to journals and publications and speaker at international events.
Alongside his professional career, he has pursued his creative interests as a painter and writer. His historical novel Polenta e Goanna, a finalist for the Arcangela Todaro-Faranda Prize (Bologna, 1998), was published by Pontecorboli in 2000. Barbara McGilvray’s English translation, Polenta and Goanna, was published by IPOC in 2008 and a new edition by Pontecorboli appeared in 2021.
He has won awards in Australia for a number of short stories and the one act play, Yvonne. In 2016 Pontecorboli published a collection of his short stories under the title Racconti di fine secolo (Tales of the End of the Century), and in 2022 it released his family memoir, La storia di un fioraio artigiano di Firenze, which was followed in 2023 by Barbara McGilvray’s English translation, The Story of an Artisan Florist in Florence.
