With their skill they have enchanted a Sardinian, the Alghero designer Antonio Marras, who for his showroom in Milan in Via Cola di Rienzo, wanted a scenic fountain 15 meters long and 4 meters high, with 100 goldfish and sentinel statues, totemic figures inspired by the Sardinian territory. The materials? Strictly ferrous, but thanks to skilled hands, also capable of restoring a sense of intimacy to things.

The hands are those of Andrea Bruno, 40, his brother Vittorio, 43, and his father Tonino 73, who in their forge in Nuoro make unique creations in steel, iron, brass, copper. A tradition that goes back four generations: the great-grandfather was a coppersmith who, in the mid-nineteenth century, created objects of daily use; the grandfather was a pragmatic blacksmith who had the intuition to move the workshop from Orani to Nuoro and the father was a romantic blacksmith prone to experimentation who ventured the first breakthrough productions. Finally, the grandchildren, university students at the Polytechnic of Milan and the Academy of Brera, with a decided impulse towards design. And we can see that.

In 2008 they founded BAM Design, Bottega Artigiana Metalli. With them, craftsmanship is no longer an end in itself, but on the contrary, it is included in a design production marked by clean lines, attention to detail and unique creative workmanship, demonstrating that simple, primitive metals can become living elements. Among the most famous pieces of BAM we can find the sonorous animals Boe and Boe+ or the plants Cactus and Fico to which are added new containers Tonie and Teh with decorative motifs typical of Sardinia.

For Vittorio and Andrea, the charm of metal is not only the fact that it deforms but that it can give emotions through certain processes that vary its light and color. And it is always Vittorio and Andrea, who grew up in the workshop, eating bread and metal and breathing its materiality, who have re-evaluated rust: a fatal defect for their father Tonino, but thanks to them it has become decoration and detail.

Rust in their creations acquires an almost philosophical value besides an aesthetic one: beautiful because it is casual, beautiful because it is uncontrollable, it is there to remind us that metal breathes and transforms. That it is alive. The flame that strikes the metal has no guideline, rust forms where the molecules react, that is in the most sensitive part of the metal sheet, enhancing the uniqueness of the product with a finish that can only be different from object to object.

In the past, a lot of work was done on the aesthetic aspect of metals: the material was protected and the soul - or rather, the manufacturing defects - was always hidden by a covering varnish. This family of artisans has inaugurated a different season: one that ennobles metal by bringing corrosion, striking and hammering to the center of aesthetic research. Strong gestures that know how to tame but that also know how to restore such elegance and beauty.

As if to say, when beauty comes from a… bam.