Our bread

An extraordinary collection in search of a museum

by Mario Calidoni

 

An impressive collection of breads. This is the legacy of Marisa Zanzucchi Castelli (Parma1921-Varano Melegari 2011): the result of passion and dedication that are intertwined with her life as a teacher, head teacher and researcher of local history. It can be said that without the school its breads collection it would have been impossible to create. In fact, she was concerned that her school of Pellegrino Parmense had to be the animator of the Archives of Parma Folk Traditions. In this context she began collecting breads, project that never abandoned even beyond the school's commitment, making it one of the purposes of her own existence. In 1979-80 she created the Museum of bread as a teaching-educational work of teachers and pupils of the secondary school of Pellegrino, one of the 28 EEC pilot schools for environmental education. Even after she have finished her school experience the collection went on, assuming also a highly anthropological characterization: the main lines of it are outlined in Bread: universe of symbols and rites of 2000 (Ed Silva). This essay analyzes the ancestral unfathomed rituals and traditions linked to the bread that the peasant culture still retains but threatened by the absolute oblivion.

At the end of last year (between September and November 2015) the National Gallery and the Palatine Library of Parma hosted part of this impressive collection, organizing an exhibition which is already an indication of a possible museum dividing into three large macro areas the rich collection.

Breads between myth and cult: The three monotheistic religions incorporate in their rites the use of bread with different values that include the sacredness and the ritual symbolism. In the bread culture it’s possible to find a substantial unity that wonder and encourage to think about the connection between the man and the sacredness.

Breads of the cycle of life: Those breads accompany not only the agricultural cycle that underlies it, but also the fundamental stages of human life; births, marriages, deaths have their breads like the most special events  linked to festival, eros, games and fun.

Breads from the continents: The civilizations of the olive and wheat in the Mediterranean area, rice for the Asian region, the corn for South America present themselves with their breads profoundly different in composition, invoice, production and meaning.

In short, "the ways of bread pass through space and time, memory and oblivion. They bring in reality and in fantasy "(Predrag Matvejević, Our Bread, Garzanti, 2009).

It is in this light that the loaves collection of Marisa Castelli Zanzucchi today has a disconcerting topicality: not because of the widespread interest in food, but for the acquired awareness of the need to preserve and enhance the value of symbols and meanings that transmits and that the contemporary world is compromising.

The Museum Parma that we hope will devote to this collection, will from this awareness and groped to realize the thought of the great museographer George -Henri Rivière who believed that the object on display (even the ethnographic object) should be presented as idea to touch.

In 2014 the Armenian lavash bread, of which several examples are present in the collection perfectly preserved thanks to a carefully devised by the collector and sent the brother proceeding Carlantonio Zanzucchi which currently holds the collection, was included in the UNESCO list of intangible heritage of humanity (intangible cultural heritage). The recognition seems a paradox because there is nothing more concrete and material than bread that nourishes us and ages in one day if you think that Vienna bread is considered stale, "old", at 7 in the evening when the day is produced.

In fact we eat bread as shared symbol and in fact, in the grounds of choice for the insertion in the collection, it is stressed above the value of the production process, the method of dissemination and importance in their daily rituals. But this, finally, is just one of many aspects of which only a museum can guarantee memory, despite the prospect of dialogue with the present and the future of the "bread".

 

http://www.museodelpane.it/marisa-zanzucchi-castelli/

Taste & Knowledge

Recipes in progress
by Alberto Salarelli
A different view
by Manuela Soressi
Landscapes and tastings
by Guido Conti
Good to know
by Davide Bernieri
Unusual meats
by Giovanni Ballarini