The brothers Beniamino and Camillo Grossrubatscher have been running the Val Gardena wood carving sales business from Vienna since 2022, thus continuing a centuries-long family tradition. Because many ancestors, from the Grossrubatscher family and also from the famous Moroder family, were active in the field of wood carving and sculpture and the trade in wood and wood carvings.
The centuries-old tradition of Val Gardena wood carving
Wood carving in Val Gardena probably has its roots in the Renaissance period and almost 500 years ago, wooden carved altars and figures of saints decorated numerous churches in the Holy Roman Empire. In the 18th century, Val Gardena craftsmen also carved many wooden toys for the children of wealthy families, especially the Viennese nobility. From the end of the 19th century, the wood carvings of the South Tyrolean mountain valley, at that time mainly sacred carvings such as nativity figures, figures of saints, crucifixes and figures of the Virgin Mary, were exported all over the world and several large companies were founded.
The Morod dynasty
The ancestors of Beniamino and Camillo Grossrubatscher, especially from the well-known Moroder (Italian: Mureda) dynasty, from which even the multiple Oscar winner Giorgio Moroder comes, were also strongly interwoven with the carving tradition. At the beginning of the 19th century, Janmatie Moroder (named for the family production headquarters) and his brother were already dealing in wood carvings. In the 1980s, Raimund Grossrubatscher (the uncle of Beniamino and Camillo Grossrubatscher) founded a manufacturing company and built it together with his brother Jonas out. Eduard Moroder, Raimund's uncle and great-uncle of Beniamino and Camillo, was also a sculptor and carved numerous nativity scenes and Christian motifs a few decades ago.
''Thank you for keeping alive the real Christmas''
The brothers Beniamino and Camillo Grossrubatscher have made it their mission to lead the tradition of Val Gardena wood carving, especially online, into the future and are now shipping the carvings throughout Europe, as well as to America, and running Advent market stalls at Viennese Christmas markets. Once, after purchasing a nativity scene, an American tourist thanked her for preserving Christian Christmas traditions, which was both praise and motivation for continuing the wood carving tradition.
The future of Val Gardena wood carving
In the coming years, the brothers plan to expand the online shop to include many more carvings, especially saint figures, nativity scenes and nativity figures, as well as numerous videos and magazine articles about the fascination of the Christmas nativity scene and traditional wood carving.
