In Italy, learning a trade took place for centuries in artisan workshops. The apprentice observes, helps, imitates and learns before producing a final test. Apprenticeship, therefore, was a model of learning that was only replaced by technical and professional schools in the nineteenth century.
This shift marked the transition from experience to knowledge, from doing to applied knowledge, from the secrecy of the Corporations to a shared methodology, and from apprenticeship to schooling with textbooks. The first vocational training schools were then established by the State, local institutions, and Catholic educators like Don Bosco. It was only in the early years of the twentieth century that post-elementary technical and vocational education developed, initially under the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce. Thus, in Italy, as in many other European countries, two types of schools emerged: one focused on culture, reserved for the few, and the other, technical and professional, aimed at the working class.
The Museum preserves both work tools and final essays from vocational schools. Regarding women’s work in the early twentieth century, the Museum holds, for example, a 1903 Singer pedal sewing machine made of iron and wood, a dressmaking bust with a wooden pedestal, a suitcase with tailoring materials, a curved wooden stick, frames with lace, and samples of knitting and sewing. For men’s carpentry work, you can find a wooden workbench, metal and wooden hammers, a bordering plane, a rabbet plane, a wooden carpenter’s hammer, an iron bow, a fretsaw bow, a three-faced file, a fretsaw drill, and various brushes. Additionally, part of the collection includes a small metal stove and a small fir wood cupboard—miniatures created as final projects during the apprenticeship period in the craftsmen’s workshops. These miniatures later became toys, purchased by parents for their daughters.
Visit the Museum to see how trades were learned in the past!