1.2 From La Morra to Barolo it is a short step

As we have seen, the family's origins were in La Morra, but the move to Barolo came fairly early, when Luciano was only a few months old. This is also why Luciano has always felt himself to be a "Barolese" in every sense.
The reasons for the move from La Morra to Barolo were linked to father Ottavio's trade. Working as a carpenter and having accumulated fine experience in various artisan workshops, he had many work offers. And, besides, he was a skilled craftsman and so the various workshops were all vying for his services.
Father Ottavio often recalled having had the good fortune to work for a few years in a large carpentry workshop in Savigliano, a traditional and well-organised artisan business that produced mainly furniture and furnishing accessories. And it produced rather elaborate furniture too, with various carved and finely crafted parts. An experience that would stand him in good stead in subsequent years. It is true that he was a carpenter, but in his work he constantly revealed that touch of originality and artistic approach that made him very well regarded.
In Barolo he began to work at the Mozzone carpentry workshop, but he stayed there only a few years. He was eager to embark on his own independent path and so he decided to set up on his own, opening his own workshop. Those years between the late Forties and early Fifties were difficult: there was plenty of work, but little money. But he immediately demonstrated his strong entrepreneurial spirit.
"In Barolo, in his workshop, – Luciano recalls – my father mainly produced door and window frames, but the fact that in the village there were many cellars that needed the carpenter for maintenance of their barrels and their cellar equipment meant that he also specialised in that sector: he repaired the vats, in particular the closing hatches (the ghigét as they are called in Piedmontese), removed tartrates from the internal surfaces, made small and large containers for wine such as tubs, buckets, baskets (àr-bi) and more. And then, for this production section, he often went to the plain between Fossano, Savigliano and Cuneo to buy mulberry wood, particularly suited to such work. And it happened that he would take me along and so I began to travel around the province of Cuneo. And I greatly enjoyed it".