Business & Finance: Fabbricotti Marble

Toward New York, last week, plowed the black Italian freighter Tagliamento, laden with a cargo of white Carrara marble. In the yards of C. D. Jackson Co., Manhattan stone importers, marblemen waited its arrival. For nine months, not a shipload of Carrara had left Italy. What was once the bread-and-butter of all marbles had become a U. S. rarity.

Marblemen explained: U. S. architects and builders, seeking magnificence, have turned from the useful, plebeian Carrara to the red Levanto, the green Tinos, to the monotones Botticina and Hauteville. Year by year, Carrara has fallen deeper into decorative disrepute, has been relegated to bathrooms, has disappeared from the yards of the importers. And last winter, patriot Fascists jumped the price of Carrara to prohibitive heights. U. S. importers protested, cancelled all orders.

For centuries, marble and Carrara have been synonymous in the hills of Italy’s Tuscany. Synonymous, too, have been Carrara and Fabbricotti. For of all the families who have hacked and hewed in the quarries of Carrara, the family of the Fabbricotti is oldest and greatest. When the two chiefs of the Fabbricotti—Guido Murray and Carlo Andrea—ride on horseback to their deep pits in the hills, they may reflect that their ancestors have ridden in just such a way, to the same pits, for some 500 years. It was in the 15th century that the head of the Fabbricotti line appeared before the Duchess who ruled over Carrara.’ Humbly, he besought permission to quarry marble. The grant she gave is valid today.

Since that day, the family has hewed marble. When Columbus set sail in a tiny caravel, a Fabbricotti was grunting, hoisting marble blocks. When Washington shivered at Valley Forge, a Fabbricotti sweated under a hot sun, polishing and smoothing white stone. When a World War became the echo for an assassin’s shot, Fabbricottis heard not. They were quarrying marble.

Guido Murray Fabbricotti (Commendatore della Corona d’Ttalia, Centauro of the Carrara Fascist Patrol, ex-British citizen) is today’s reigning marble tycoon. To his sister is married his first cousin, Carlo Andrea Fabbricotti, ex-officer of the Italian Navy, ex-officer of the Italian Army, ex-Italian Ambassador to the Romanov court of St. Petersburg. These two men, kinsmen and rivals, carry on the 500-year Fabbricotti tradition.

Last week, as every week, Quarryman Guido Murray Fabbricotti, 63, dignified, solemn, rose at 4:30, went ahorseback to his quarries. The early hour results from two factors. The quarries are quick to heat, and work is hard after the 10 a. m. sun begins to burn. And Quarryman Guido Murray Fabbricotti is not wholly Latin. His indolent Italian temperament is pricked into action by the Scottish blood of his mother. Guide’s father, Bernardo Fabbricotti, 64 years ago, married Helen Murray, a Scotch noblewoman of sorts. Son Guido inherited the quarries of his father and the early rising hours of his mother—together with an English public school accent and a love for good horses.

Misty morning visit to the quarries finished, Guido Murray Fabbricotti goes home to La Padula, his perfect Italian villa. He sorts and files his orders for marble bathrooms, buildings, movie palaces, monolith monuments to Mussolini (TIME, Oct. 1). He cogitates these facts: the stirring days when he renounced his British citizenship, put on a Black Shirt and captured, with one Renato Ricci, the garrison at Carrara and joining innumerable little bands from the littoral started on the now famed march on Rome; he is the greatest living authority on Carrara marble; he has just jumped down from one of the finest Sardinian stallions in all Italy;* he has sturdy sons who will hew marble when he is dead.

—Horseman Guido Murray has only stallions in his stalls. He considers it unmanly to ride geldings, mares.