Terrazzer — plate 53
The Arti che vanno per via nella città di Venezia (1753, 1770, 1785, etc.), by Gaetano Zompini (1700–1778), contains sixty engravings of common, mostly poor people, peddling their trades on the streets of Venice in the mid-1700s.
Text
Fazzo terrazzi e sfogio, e malmorini E tegno in conzo i vechi ale Casae E anca so far de quei che val cechini.
Translation
I make terrazzo floors and repairs, and marble plaster
And keep in shape the old ones in the houses
And I also know how to make the ones worth real money.
Notes
Terrazzo floors are the traditional Venetian floors, made by a layer of cement or mortar, in which fragments of marble or other coloured stone are embedded.
A terazzer is a maker of terazzo floors. Minor damage and small cracks were repairrd by applying sfogio di terazzo to the surface, and repolishing it.
Plaster mixed with powdered marble, again for repairs, was called marmorin.
The word cechin is a variation of zechin — zecchino — one of the highest denomination Venetian gold coins, to indicate high-value terrazzo floors.
See Boerio (1829), entries TERAZZER, TERAZZO, SFOGIO – SFOGIO DE TERAZZO, MARMORIN and ZECHIN.
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Bibliography
Boerio, Giuseppe. Dizionario del dialetto veneziano. Venezia : coi tipi di Andrea Santini e figlio, 1829.
Zompini, Gaetano. Le arti che vanno per via nella città di Venezia inventate ed incise da Gaetano Zompini, Aggiuntavi una memoria di detto autore. Venezia, 1785.
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