View “Building a Gondola”

Photography by Erla Zwingle
Written by Erla Zwingle

Why is a gondola black? By the end of the 1500s, noble Venetian families were competing to show who had the most extravagant gondola. Applying the brakes to this madness, in 1609 the government stepped in and decreed that henceforth all gondolas would be created equal: sober, simple, and black. Ironically, the competitive cycle seems to be starting again, as more and more gondoliers try to attract tourists by bedecking their gondolas ever more lavishly, making others feel they have to keep up. Venetians aren’t impressed. “Sicilian festival wagons,” I heard one man say, with a bit of a sniff.

Oak templates for each part of a boat’s frame guide the cuts of essential components. Each style of Venetian boat, gondola or not, has its own specific templates. In this collection of Roberto’s, all are for a gondola. The two long curved pieces to the right, for example, are for the gondola’s stem- and sternpost.

Here, the future gondola’s ribs are attached to the cantier, the form permanently fixed to the floor from which all of Roberto’s gondolas arise. The gondola’s asymmetry can be seen here by looking at the shape of the bottom, where the left side is curving outward 9 inches farther than the virtually straight right side. “It’s not the sides that make the boat asymmetrical,” Roberto said; “it’s the bottom.”

The key to making a fine gondola is to customize the upward curve of the hull to fit the rower. Roberto does this by using this vise to pull the stern and sometimes also the bow downward, thereby compensating for the weight of the gondolier. This way, the gondola always remains flat in the water.

The crucial tool in Roberto’s workshop—far beyond his hammers and saws, and even his battered folding metal rule—is his eye. He started working on gondolas when he was a boy, learning by carefully watching his uncle at work. “The master doesn’t always tell you everything,” one worker told me. “You figure it out, or you ‘steal with your eyes.’” It’s worth noting that, even at the age of 57, Roberto almost never wears glasses.

“The painting is the most important step,” said Marco Dordit, assigned to this delicate task. “It has to be perfect.” This goes double for the primer, which serves to “anchor” the paint. “If the base is perfect, the other coats go on better,” he says. Marco glimpsed a tiny drip and instantly smoothed it away. “You could see it through the paint later if you don’t remove it now.”

It’s not enough merely to be black, the new gondola must utterly gleam. The number of coats of paint depends on the weather on painting day: Summer heat makes paint absorb better into the wood, hence as many as eight coats could be applied, while winter’s chill accommodates as few as four. Only professional gondoliers are required to paint their boats black. Venetian rowing clubs use their club colors; the nine gondolas used for the city’s official rowing races favor a rainbow from brown to red to yellow.

An occasional snowfall may make a lovely image, but snow isn’t so lovely when it melts. Gondolas aren’t completely covered at night, water will seep through undiscovered cracks. “When the boat’s wet you feel the difference,” gondolier Marco Farnea told me. After a few days of rain and fog, he said, “There could be 100 kilos of water that you’ve accumulated.”

Erla Zwingle has written for dozens of magazines over the past 30 years, primarily National Geographic, to which she has contributed 25 articles as well as writing its Guide to Venice.

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