Aosta Valley tradition
The origins of the Aosta Valley craftsmanship.
In the past , the winter season, for the mountain farmer, was not only the arrival of the cold and the reducing hour of sun during the day, it was also the period when he could stay at home, making some maintenance and carpenter’s works such as agricultural tools, daily objects, etc while nature outside was sleeping. 
Every artisan farmer carves wood to make objects and to personalize them with decorations that deal with religious symbols or good wishes, carving the creation’s date, the farmer’s initial letters or a dedication to the object’s owner. The farmer helps himself with chisels and gouges and adds to every day use tools zoomorphic figures and scenes of the farmer’s life. Sometimes the artisan creates real sculptures that are useless but nice to look at.
This practice was also executed in the “veillà”, the nights spent by families in the warm cowshed, place in which people met and shared tales, songs, traditions, where first loves arose, and families shared the happiness for a new born.. Some of the manufactured articles made during the winter was sold to earn some money to help the family. The “Sant’Orso” fair was at that time, as now, the most expected meeting in Aosta Valley, where people could buy artistic and traditional articles. The fair was a great artisans and population’s feast where people met in Aosta at the winter’s end and shared the happiness for the beginning of the warmer days.
Nowadays winter isn’t a slack season, the “veillà” is disappeared, instead there’s the television and people stop working only during the Christmas time. The artisan risked to disappear too, but, fortunately, in the second half of the last century some admires and collectors of the more beautiful works convinced the Regional Administration to safeguard and to revalue the schools of carving, sculpture, turning, tools and objects for the agriculture, shoes and accessories for clothes, iron articles, furniture and woven.
The popular art could count on many local artisans which hand down techniques, the style and the excitability of the works. Every year on January the 30th and 31st takes place the “Sant’Orso” fair in Aosta, where thousand of professionals and not, show their works. Some works follow the tradition, while others are innovative and full of excitability..