View “How Carlo Setti Makes a Traditional Leather Mask”

Photography by Riccardo Roiter Rigoni
Written by Erla Zwingle, Contributing Editor

Here is the mold for Harlequin, the famous servant, waiting to be reborn in leather. Unlike the negative mold for papier-mâché, this one is “positive.” Carlo carved it from a block of Swiss stone pine. “It’s an easy wood to carve,” he says, “and it’s sufficiently resinous so that it doesn’t crack.”

Leather is tougher than papier-mâché, and each hide has its own personality. Carlo’s leather has been tanned the old way, using tannins from bark and other plant materials. “If it’s chemically tanned it remains elastic, rubbery,” he says. “You can’t work it.” Flexibility is crucial, which calls for leather from the animal’s sides rather than along the spine. To make the leather pliable, it’s first soaked in water.

Carlo uses approximately 40 tiny nails of copper or brass per mask (iron blackens the leather). “It’s a craft that requires lots of patience,” he says, “that’s why hardly anybody does leather.” Carlo came to Venice in 1974; first he made leather bags, then some masks for a show. And he got hooked.

The leather must be pressed onto the mold’s every curve and protuberance. “There are some parts of the face that are easy enough… what’s hardest is the nose,” he says. Making leather conform to a nose, especially the Commedia’s often-exaggerated classic shapes, requires not only determination, but also strong thumbs. “If you pull leather all day, your arms really hurt.”

The deeper the creases, the more distinct the face will be as seen from a distance, crucial for the theatre. Tradition is paramount. “You can’t follow fashion,” he says. “If I knew what people wanted, I’d be rich.” Carlo’s call to maskdom did not spring, as one might imagine, from some elemental passion for the craft. I continued to ask, and he continued to reply: “I made them to survive.”

If Carlo wants to give the surface some “tooth,” he uses a hammer-point made of horn. (He made this hammer by cutting the solid pointed end off of a classic shoehorn.) If he changes his mind, a few firm strokes with a flat stick will smooth everything out again. “The leather doesn’t always respond the way you want, but in that case, you just wet it again and keep at it.”

After the folds and bulges have been emphasized, Carlo finishes the surface. The flat side of the same stick that carved the creases brings out a soft luster to the leather—a difference you can see here in the finish of the eyebrow and the nose, which has yet to be rubbed.

Features carved, leather dry, out come the nails.

Carlo cuts away the leather tabs for the nails to make a smooth, even edge all the way around the mask. It’s now time for Harlequin to wake up and get ready to play, as Carlo opens his eyes.

A leather mask on active duty in the theatre needs extra support. (As Carlo reminds me: “Actors sweat a lot”). So he shaves down the leather edges, inserts a metal wire around the perimeter, and glues the leather closed. Many mask buyers might never be aware of this extra feature. But reinforcement with wire is how it’s done, so Carlo continues the tradition.

Carlo parts ways with pure tradition at this point, because in the old days, the leather masks were always black. “The public has never seen colored [leather] masks,” Carlo says, “but I don’t do it for the public.” He uses aniline powder, diluting each color with alcohol to achieve a liquid resembling watercolor. “I don’t want to use colors that completely cover the leather. They make it seem plastified.”

The one traditional color Carlo keeps is the red of the “button” on the top of a Harlequin mask. Some say it’s a relic of what once was a horn, Harlequin having been a leader of demons. Carlo thinks it’s a reminder of the carbuncles, cysts, and other memorabilia that a lifetime of maladies would have left on rustic servants. “The nobleman had the beauty-mark,” he says, “the servant had the ‘button.’ Everybody had something.”

Riccardo Roiter Rigoni is a native of Venice, Italy, who has worked as a photographer since 2001. He has been a contributor to a range of books, magazines, and newspapers and is the author of the books, “Venezia Sensation” (2008), and “Venice Timeless Moments” (2012).
Erla Zwingle, Contributing Editor, 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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