PUBLISHED ON ROULEUR ISSUE 31 © all rights reserved

extract from the article:

“Ah, I told you! It’s no good! A proper oil can’t cost less than 12 per litre. That’s fact. You know Sting? He lives nearby – and his costs €25”

“Tommasini refers to the current crop of framebuilders abroad as cantinari, basement workers; more hobbyists than genuine artisans”

“While people are still happy to trade on fatto a mano in Italia, the sad fact is that most of them make very little, if anything, in il bel paese”

words Colin O’Brien images Paolo Ciaberta

PUBLISHED ON ROULEUR ISSUE 27 © all rights reserved

Tiziano is artisan and he made bikes. Beautiful bikes. / Tiziano è artigiano e fa biciclette. Belle biciclette

extract from the article:

“Well that went well. Tiziano and his wife Elena are lovely people, with fascinating history and some beautiful, beautiful telai. It transpires they met in 1980, when she went to help him with a Dutch bloke who wanted to buy a bike. She was 24 and living in Italy because it always rains in Groningen, where she comes from. They fell in love and started working together. He built the frames in italian, she sold them in French, Dutch and English, and eventually TVM used them to win bike races all over Europe.”

words Herbie Sykes images Paolo Ciaberta