Steven's Pegoretti Responsorium with Ciavete Paint

The Long Read (and road) - Steven's Pegoretti Responsorium

Dario Pegoretti died in 2018. We spoke to him a few months before he died and he said he was tired. Still working in the Pegoretti studio most days, but definitely too fatigued to work with us on a project we had in mind. Dario's legacy and reputation grows with every year since his passing - artisan, artist, teacher, designer and Master of The Flame. We were introduced to Dario, by the great Ben Serotta, who would revere him in the same out-breath and sentence as Richard Sachs. In fact Ben, Richard and Dario were the only frame-builders to be part of the great Columbus tubing brain-trust, devoted to the second coming of steel.

Dario's Authentic Legacy

Is the restless spirit of the craft he imbued in his tiny team in Verona. Led for many years (even when Dario was alive) by Pietro Pietricola. Pietro is a by nature shy and slightly reclusive, so hiding behind Dario's raucous charisma suited them both for decades.
But Pietro is every inch the master-craftsman and artist of his great friend. And for that reason we love giving the little bottega in Verona, the most challenging bicycle-building briefs imaginable. To give you some idea of the scale, Pegoretti build only three-hundred frames a year. And of those Cyclefit commission between eight and fifteen projects every year. And they are always some the most involving, difficult and ultimately rewarding bikes we build in a year. Here is Steven's story. It was one of the most personal, involving and fun bikes we have ever had the privilege of steering through the commissioning process.

Steven's Words

It is not often that I am asked to prepare a mood board. So when Phil and Cathal at Cyclefit asked me to consider the matter as a part of my Pegoretti Responsorium Ciavete build, I didn't know quite where to start.

I've a capricious nature and that means my mood or what I'm focused on will change day to day.

Written In Ink

So I thought about the tattoos that I've collected over the past decade and how in many cases, I'd go to an artist with a notion or feeling I wanted the work to capture and then left it to the pro to come up with the representation. It's an act of collaboration and trust and the Ciavete process seemed to me no different. The team at Pegoretti set the standard for both build and finishing. They're magicians of steel and paint. I knew if I could get myself down to a few concepts, they'd run with them in a direction I'd happily follow.

Second That Emotion

After a lot of introspection, a touch of existentialism and a large amount of navel gazing, I came up with a few notions to share.
The photos attached are taken right from the brief I shared with the Pegoretti team along with some of the points we discussed over a delicious lunch in Verona in January.

David Lynch, Quantum Physics and The Philosophy of Light

I've been lucky enough to surround myself with the philosophers of science of one sort or another and aesthetes throughout my life and have picked a couple things up. I hoped to convey my interest in the particle and wave duality quantum physics, how you can paint with light and the cinema of David Lynch (who sadly died whilst this project was underway).

Monocromatic Approach

Cristina, Pietro, and Leonardo patiently listened as I bumbled my way from one of these topics to the other. Not sure my tangential style was best suited to this file but a black base for the Ciavete and largely monocromatic approach to the project as a whole came through with the help of photos of the shadows cast in my home by local streetlights that I shared with the team.

Kazamir Malevich

Kazimir Malevich was my grandfather's uncle and my love of his work and the ideas that it was informed by, like the end of objectivity announced by his Black Square, was another piece of the Ciavete puzzle.

Abstraction and Representation

Malevich and the Russian avant garde of the early 20th century used geometry in a representative sense which spoke to me and to the Pegoretti team as well.
We discussed abstraction and representation, and it was invaluable to be there in the studio and use the team's own work as well as some of Malevich’s to convey what I was seeing conceptually in Malevich’s approach.

We also talked about personality and they were of the view that a Ciavete for a colourful character like myself needed touches of colour.

In this sense the Memphis design school was my reference and I spent some time talking with the team about MTV, the Memphis colourway table lights I have at home as well as my sense of how Memphis united the simple functional focus of modernism and more maximalist forms, which in a way is what I'm all about.

Rideable Art - Bold and Beautifully Balanced

I'll say a word about the finished project, having ridden it for the first time yesterday.

It's the finest ride I've ever experienced. Bold and beautifully balanced, that's my San Gilberto.

Phil convinced Pietro to drop the bottom bracket more than usual to align with my Cyclefit, and it really told in how confident I felt in the saddle.

As for the Ciavete paint, well, it's a work of art. I can see how the source materials, the notions explored and concepts we discussed at the studio that sunny morning were considered, interpreted and then made into something unlike anything else. Despite how painstaking the detail it, and it really is so precise in its expressions, it also looks like Leonardo had fun with it.

There are touches you'll see on other Pegorettis but this also looks like the face of one of the great businesses in cycling finding new ways to surpass their own standards. It's been a privilege to be part of this quite magical process.