The funnel

The Ettore Guatelli Museum is, in a sense, an exhibition of lives reflected also in the items belonging to the world of spontaneous design, such as the funnel made of recycled cans. Ettore Guatelli’s project was not an end in itself. He wished to create a museum displaying lives, a museum of humanity that was not simply a nostalgic recollection of a rural farming community that has now almost completely disappeared, but sought to capture the essence thereof through the stories behind its exhibits, reflecting the value and dignity of all human lives.

The Ettore Guatelli collection can be described as constantly evolving because, as its director Mario Turci wrote: “[...] Each new exhibit prompted Guatelli to complete or reinvent part of the collection. His museum is constantly evolving, reflecting a sense of timelessness, as if in deference to its exhibits and the stories behind them that were continuously renewed, reinvented, redesigned and reused.’ (Magni C., Turci M. (ed.), The Museum is here. The Ettore Guatelli Museum, Ozzano di Taro, Milan, 2005, Skira)

In the 1950s, Ettore Guatelli began increasingly regular visits to waste collectors’ storerooms in the Apennines, gradually laying the foundations for his future museum. From the mid-1970s, his collection expanded considerably, becoming unintentionally part of a growing trend in the seventies and eighties for the revival and promotion of popular culture. As a result, his establishment became a unique and inimitable demographic, ethnological and anthropological heritage museum of 20th-century Italy.

‘How many things can a tin be used for? The uses are so obvious that we finally lose count of them. Tins abound today. In the past, however, they only contained preserves and there were far fewer of them, since farmers did their own preserving: the gentlefolk who came for a taste of the country left them along the riverbanks in large holes that we children used to call "buson". We would collect them to make toys, although the adults sometimes found other uses for them [...]’ [Ferorelli V., Niccoli F. (ed.), 1999, The cat’s tail: writings by Ettore Guatelli: his museum, his stories, Institute for Cultural and Natural Artistic Heritage of the Emilia-Romagna Region, Bologna]