Photo: Civvì · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Museo etnografico e dello strumento musicale a fiato

Museum of Quarna Sotto dedicated to the local tradition of making wind instruments, with an ethnographic section on alpine agro-pastoral life.

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About the museum

The museum arose from the initiative of young enthusiasts who, in the 1960s, began to collect objects of local craftsmanship and to record the stories of the elders of Quarna Sotto and Quarna Sopra. After a temporary exhibition in 1960 set up in a parish hall, the first permanent exhibition was opened in 1972, and in 1975 the association presented instruments and farm objects in two rooms made available by the municipality.

The current building, financed by a donation from Fernando Saltamerenda, then owner of the wind-instrument firm Rampone & Cazzani, was inaugurated on 8 July 1989. The museum tells the story of the wind-instrument craft that developed in Quarna from the 19th century, thanks to firms such as that of Egidio Forni, his nephew Agostino Rampone and I. M. Grassi, which exported their products all over the world.

The lower floor houses the ethnographic section, with reconstructed rooms of alpine agro-pastoral life, while the upper floor is dedicated to wind instruments, in particular saxophones.

Highlights

Wind instruments, especially saxophones, prototypes and instruments built to order
Obsolete instruments such as sarrusophones and saxorusophones
Stages of instrument production, with machines and work tools
Reconstructed rooms: milk cellar, 18th-century kitchen, 19th-century bedroom
Weaving room, turner's workshop and cobbler's bench

Permanent exhibitions

Strumenti musicali a fiato – The upper floor is dedicated to wind instruments, especially saxophones, with prototypes for the study of key mechanics, instruments built to order and obsolete instruments such as sarrusophones and saxorusophones, together with the machines and stages of production.
Museo etnografico – The lower floor presents reconstructed rooms of alpine agro-pastoral life: milk cellar, 18th-century kitchen, 19th-century bedroom, weaving room, turner's workshop and cobbler's bench.