Amico & Co Srl – One spring day many years ago, my father took me along to the shipyard where he worked. The yard was extremely untidy and, to a young boy, looked both chaotic and dangerous. Our family boat – an 18m wooden ketch – was out of the water on dry land. When I first saw where the foreman had hauled the boat out onto the hard standing, I stood aghast: surely, only monsters or superheroes could pluck a yacht out of the water like that?

This is where I received my introduction to a world in which highly motivated workers displayed their skills: men totally absorbed in their tasks, silently going about their work. Every so often, they would climb out of the boat and disappear into a workshop, later to emerge with a freshly formed object perfectly crafted to fulfill a specific role on board.