L’amore nella pentola

Piazza Borgo di Sotto was the gathering place of the town’s women: here they embroidered the tablecloths and here, on the night of Sant’Antonio, they lit the fires. Water was heated over the fire in large pots, and in them the lead of the wild boar hunters was left to melt — the so-called “pallini”, or “piombini”, the shot from the cartridges.

Once it had cooled, the lead took on shapes that the young women interpreted to recognise the trade of the husband awaiting them. This is the moment Zed1 brought onto the wall of the building overlooking the square.

Duse, born and raised in the little square where she still lives, recounts the details of the ritual: the bundles of firewood came from the priest’s woodpiles, the fires were very high and the young women always stirred the lead in a circle. That is why the shapes that came out almost always looked like inkwells. So the husband would be a writer? No writer at all: a civil servant.

Into the scene the artist has also put a wild boar — or a porceddu — in honour of the culinary tradition of a town where wild boar hunting is still a leading activity. In the background are the landscapes of the area, Gino the horse who lived in the stables on the square and the Sardinian flag: the origin of the owner of the façade, and at the same time the mark of the large Sardinian community that has lived in the Riparbella countryside for years.