Every day since he was 22 years old, Marino Menegazzo has woken up, headed to his workshop, picked up an eight-kilo mallet, and relentlessly beaten thick blocks of gold with it. For two hours, he administers around 30,000 blows to the precious metal, until it’s flattened into a barely-there piece of foil weighing just 0.002 grams–200 times thinner than human hair.
It’s thankless work, which is why no one does it anymore: Marino, now 66 years old, is the last goldbeater in the world. This long-dying craft was once a common profession in Venice; at its peak, there were 340 gold beaters in the city. Now it’s just Marino, who works from his historic workshop in the Cannaregio district with his business partners: twin daughters, Eleonora and Sara, and wife, Sabrina.
