MGN — The Art of Plaster since 1980

Naldo Busato's mastery is a family affair: since childhood, he has visited construction sites with his father, Felicetto “golden hands”, a bricklayer and restorer from Vicenza.
Accompanying him to work, at the age of 9 he visited Villa Porto in Dueville, which at the time needed restoration work on its plasterwork and frescoes. This was his first encounter with Palladio. Palladian villas are a familiar feature of the Vicenza landscape. They seem to emerge here and there from the countryside, like a legacy of a splendid past, faded by the weight of centuries and yet still full of splendour and, above all, repositories of ancient craftsmanship. The encounter with such majestic architecture and technique had a profound effect on Naldo, even though he was only a child. Finally, at the age of 11, he received a special Christmas present: a huge jute sack containing a restorer's tools: trowels, small trowels, wooden floats... His destiny was sealed, and a passion was born that would become his profession.

Naldo took his first steps in the world of restoration guided by his father's teachings: master craftsmen traditionally passed on their skills and knowledge in this way, from father to son. He began working alongside him on building sites: villas, churches...
He learned how to mix mortar with a pickaxe, how to prepare a pit of quicklime, and the techniques of fresco painting and dusting. It was a true apprenticeship of yesteryear, his task being to learn everything his master had to teach him. It was precisely this drive to seek out and absorb techniques and methods that were dying out (replaced by the new way of building during the economic boom) that would characterise Naldo Busato's entire career from then on.
One day, a craftsman specialising in marmorino plaster, but with no children to pass on the trade to, asked Felicetto for a “borrowed son” to take into his workshop, and Naldo was chosen from among the Busato brothers. 'Give me the most passionate one, so that I can teach him everything I know and thus continue my story'. And the most passionate one, of course, was Naldo: he changed master and workshop, ready to learn more and further perfect his technique.

The moment when Naldo Busato is put to the test, when he realises that he has learned everything there is to know for the time being, comes when he is 15 years old. He is working on the restoration of a church. The fresco painter called in to do the paintings needs someone to lay the groundwork on which he will then paint, and of all the builders in the company, he chooses Naldo: he is the son of a master craftsman, so he should be a safe bet... but will that be enough? No, he is put to the test anyway: first, he is questioned on the materials and techniques he knows, then it is on to the practical side, with an application test. He passes the test with flying colours (attracting the envy of his senior colleagues, but not for his technique) and is entrusted with the task of preparing the base for the fresco, marking it with a nail and dusting the design, until he is ready to paint the sky and the cloaks on which the painter's work will then be grafted.

Between the late 1970s and early 1980s, Naldo Busato, thanks to his talent, began collaborating with shipyards in Venice, where there was a real boom in restoration work. It was a professional success: in 1980, he founded MGN and had the unique and extraordinary opportunity to learn the ancient traditional Venetian application techniques directly from the last Venetian masters.
MGN was born out of the need to recreate natural lime plasters for the restoration of historic buildings and distribute them in premixed form: it would be the first company in Italy to supply customised materials by reusing the original raw materials. However, waiting for him in Venice was also the immense experience of the last true local masters, whose immense technical skills were on the verge of being lost. Many of them, having no one to pass on their craft to (a reflection of social change: their children, instead of following in their fathers' footsteps, often took other paths), were desperately looking for someone to teach it to, so that their work and knowledge would not die out. The professional peak of a master craftsman is not only achieved through personal fulfilment, but also by passing on one's knowledge and leaving behind apprentices: the last Venetian masters found an heir in Naldo, and his expertise was also enriched by their practical techniques.

The need for new, higher-performance materials was growing. Naldo Busato undertook various research projects together with the Superintendency, the Milan Polytechnic and a researcher from Naples: by studying Roman mortars, he finally succeeded in creating a restorative material that was truly durable and able to withstand the harsh conditions in Venice. His Venetian experience led him to collaborate directly with the Superintendency and its laboratory: today, science also plays a fundamental role in ancient restoration, and Naldo Busato enthusiastically welcomed this new possibility. His research into restoration techniques for dehumidifying masonry began in Venice and was based on local needs. A collaboration with the Politecnico di Milano led to research into Roman mortars, which were studied directly on site by researchers. Through material testing, numerous attempts were made in the laboratory to reproduce them. However, the first important breakthrough came in 1985: a researcher from Naples, an expert on pozzolans, explained the technical and scientific properties of Roman mortars to him, illustrating them directly on buildings during a visit to Pompeii. It was on the basis of this knowledge that Naldo succeeded in creating a long-lasting restoration product. In Venice, many construction sites built during those years are still intact: where the product has been applied properly, it can last up to 80 years.

Andrea Palladio's creations, things had changed considerably compared to many years earlier: now he was the one working on site, backed by years of experience and the support of modern material analysis techniques... in a short space of time, he found himself restoring numerous villas,
reproducing the original materials. The rigour of historical reconstruction has given rise to products such as Nigra Padoana, one of the plasters used by Palladio, which is still in the catalogue today.

In the 1990s, it was a short step from Venice to the rest of Italy: Bari, Naples... Following his products from creation to application, Naldo Busato constantly sought out the local old masters, further expanding his knowledge. The result of this journey is an enormous wealth of technical application expertise, an ancient knowledge that is now condensed into the excellence of MGN products.