Raul Bertuccelli, veteran float builder, dies
Times Picayune 07-06-2010
Submitted By NOVA

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Raul Bertuccelli, an exuberant member of an Italian float-making family who put his skills to
work building floats and outsize walking heads for nearly 30 years of Carnival parades, died
June 24 at West Jefferson Medical Center of complications of a stroke. He was 82.

His papier-mâché creations adorned the flamboyant floats of the Rex, Bacchus, Endymion and Alla
parades. He built the cornucopia for the Boeuf Gras float in the Rex parade, as well as figures
for the Wonderwall and the daily Carnival parades during the 1984 world's fair. He also made the
massive Mr. Bingle figure that hovered during the Christmas shopping season outside Maison
Blanche's Canal Street store. (The store has closed; its building has been converted to the
Ritz-Carlton New Orleans.)

Mr. Bertuccelli made some of his figures move. For the Rex parade, float designer Henri
Schindler said, Mr. Bertuccelli's creations included a giant dragon, a lizard and a lion, all
enormous and animated. Even their eyes moved.

Mr. Bertuccelli had grown up building such mobile figures in Viareggio, his hometown in the
Italian region of Tuscany, where his father and uncle making floats for the annual Carnevale
celebration.

A jester head that Mr. Bertuccelli's uncle, Sandro Bertuccelli, made has become a regular
feature of the Rex procession.

Blaine Kern, a dominant figure in New Orleans' Carnival, met Mr. Bertuccelli during the 1960s
while Kern was studying European celebrations. The two became friends, and in 1977 Mr.
Bertuccelli came to New Orleans with his family to work for Kern.

"It was obvious that he enjoyed what he was doing," said Barry Kern, Blaine Kern's son and the
president of Blaine Kern Artists. "He had that Italian flair that was so incredible."

Said Schindler: "He was like Tuscany -- bright, beautiful, warm."

To make his creations, including the outsize heads that marchers wore in the Endymion parade,
Mr. Bertuccelli used a multistep process that started with a clay sculpture of the figure,
Jonathan Bertuccelli said.

Then he made a plaster mold. When that had set, he pulled that off and filled the inside of that
mold with several layers of papier-mâché, a soggy mixture of paper, flour and water. Once it
dried, the result, the younger Bertuccelli said, was light and strong, with room inside for
devices to make the figure move.

In 1983, Mr. Bertuccelli left Kern to form Studio 3, a float-building firm, with his sons
Jonathan and Giorgio. Giorgio has moved to Los Angeles to pursue a music career; Jonathan
represents the third generation of Bertuccellis to continue making floats.

Studio 3 has continued to do work for Kern, Jonathan Bertuccelli said. It also did work for the
world's fair, including walking heads that roamed the grounds and mountains floating atop barges
in the Great Hall, now the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

For nearly two decades, Studio 3 also made the floats for Houston's Thanksgiving Day parade.

Making floats wasn't all Mr. Bertuccelli did with his hands. During World War II, he started
boxing U.S. soldiers for food and money. One soldier he trained with was Ezzard Charles, who
later won the heavyweight championship.

Mr. Bertuccelli, who was the first alternate in the welterweight division of Italy's team for
the 1948 London Olympics, turned professional, winning 31 fights, losing three and fighting to a
tie in one.

He also built floats for carnival parades in three Colombian cities: Bogotá, Cartagena and
Baranquilla.

"He dreamed big," Carnival chronicler Arthur Hardy said.

When float builders in Viareggio learned of Mr. Bertuccelli's death, they honored him by laying
down their tools and leaving their warehouses for two days, Giorgio Bertuccelli said.

Survivors include his wife, Augusta Falorni Bertuccelli; four sons, Giorgio Bertuccelli of Los
Angeles, Jonathan Bertuccelli of New Orleans, Stefano Bertuccelli of Prato, Italy, and Raul
Bertuccelli Jr. of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; three daughters, Kenia Barni, Patrizia Calugi and
Emanuela Vignali, all of Prato; three sisters, Renata Jensen of Gainesville, Fla., and Olga
Donati and Carla Pulvirenti, both of Viareggio; six grandchildren; and three great-
grandchildren.

In lieu of a funeral, a party celebrating Mr. Bertuccelli and his work will be held Friday at 7
p.m. at Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World, 233 Newton Street, Algiers.

"His life was Mardi Gras, and he didn't want anything with sadness," Jonathan Bertuccelli said.