Reggio Emilia You know “Cash or Trash. Who Offers More?”the television program broadcast on Nove, hosted by Paolo Conticini, in which five “merchants” compete for vintage or attic objects at an auction? Here, one of the latest episodes (that of May 31st to be precise) featured a piece of Reggio Emilia thanks to the participation, as a seller, of the 65-year-old from Reggio Emilia Corrado Pedroniwhich to the art expert Alessandro Rosa, called to evaluate the “treasures” or presumed such before each auction – which is why the title speaks of “trash”, which in Italian vulgarly means “rubbish” – brought two rubber Ledra puppets depicting Laurel and Hardy.
To the fateful question “how much are they worth?”, the expert appraiser of modern art, antiques and design objects, replied…100 euros. And for precisely that same sum, at the end of a fairly hard-fought auction, the two puppets were won by the merchant Ada Egidio, a “ravenous serial accumulator” (as she herself admits) who manages a contemporary art gallery and a antiques store. «It was a very fun experience» admits Pedroni, who immediately tells the story of the two puppets. «I was 7 years old when they were given to me, it was 1965. Since I was a child I have been attracted by these objects, which all come from the Bazar Vampa, the shop in via Emilia Santo Stefano, where today the Libreria all’Arco is located, which closed in the seventies.
In Reggio Emilia he was among the first to sell toys and it has remained in my DNA.” «My grandfather – the 65-year-old from Reggio continues to remember – was a friend of the owner and they were often given to me as gifts. I still have about forty of them, including marionettes, model cars and puppets. I even have a wooden fort with toy soldiers. I have moved several times but, being obsessively fond of these objects, I have always kept them.” At “Cash or Trash” the collector from Reggio Emilia, an accountant who organizes events in the province with his wife and loves hanging out at the markets, brought the puppets of the two comedians (if you squeeze them the black bowler hats rise!) even though he wasn’t convinced of wanting to get rid of it. «Because they represented my peaceful childhood», he admits. «Laurel and Hardy they embody the nostalgia of those years. In short, we all feel a bit like Peter Pan. When I was a child, I couldn’t wait to get home to sit in front of the television and watch “Oggi le comemiche”, which was dedicated to the comedy films of the silent era. And they, of course, were great protagonists.” © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
