RuvidaMente
SICILY
Historical events have meant that there is no continuity between the splendors of the ceramic art of Magna Graecia and the contemporary one. After more than a millennium of almost total darkness, the production of rustic terracotta, mainly water containers, was reintroduced in some small Arab communities, located along the coasts. But it was not until the seventeenth century that a local community, moreover forced by natural events, was forced to put those primordial furnaces back into operation. This happened in Santo Stefano di Camastra, a community of shepherds who settled on the seashore following landslides that had made their village on the heights uninhabitable.
More out of necessity than vocation, they began to make bricks at first, gradually evolving production towards everyday objects, then, from the end of the 1700s, majolica tiles and artistic ceramics.
Caltagirone ceramics also have a similar history. Started by the Arabs who exploited the clay quarries, it was interrupted in the fourteenth
century due to a huge landslide and resumed in the sixteenth century in the new district of the "cannatari" (from "cannate", water containers), enjoying commercial success throughout the island.
The production ranged from vases, jars, chandeliers, to the characteristic anthropomorphic lamps, decorated with touches of yellow and green in the foliage decoration, or in blue monochrome on a
white background. After the destruction of the Catania earthquake of 1693,
production resumed with difficulty between ups and downs until, in 1918, the opening of an art school gave new impetus to the production which continues today with great liveliness.
Sciacca, in the province of Agrigento, can be considered the third ceramic pole in Sicily. It all began between the 1400s and 1500s, when barons and bishops gave impetus to the activity of some local majolica masters, with large orders for decorated tiles to embellish churches and palaces (including the cathedral of Monreale). It was the opportunity that allowed them to refine the techniques and search for aesthetic canons different from those of Saracen and Catalan influence, opening up to the new Italian Renaissance taste that still characterizes the production of many local artisans today.
TUSCANY
In almost all Italian regions, the processing of clay has developed in parallel in the production of rustic objects, for everyday use, and in more refined forms ranging from majolica to art ceramics, to porcelain. And almost always, one of the two has prevailed over the other, thus characterizing regional production. In Tuscany, on the other hand, these two forms of craftsmanship continue to coexist, both enjoying good commercial success.
In the field of "rustic" ceramics, how can we forget the great tradition of Tuscan terracotta, with its main center in the furnaces of Impruneta, where terracotta for floors is mainly produced, but also large oil jars, brine containers, basins and garden pots modeled by hand. Or the earthenware pots, ideal for cooking beans and the many soups typical especially of the southern area of the region, produced in particular in the areas of Colle Val d'Elsa and Chiusi, in the surroundings of Siena, and the classic truncated cone-shaped basins, with a wide rim and with the interior painted "sponged" in green on a white or pale yellow background, in the production of which the artisans of San Giovanni alla Vena, in the province of Pisa, specialized.
Thanks to the great Tuscan artistic tradition, the front of decorative ceramics is much richer, both in terms of diffusion and in its external forms. The Arezzo area is particularly lively where, in the shops of Cortona, Anghiari and Monte San Savino, the manufacture of pieces of the ancient tradition continues, such as decorative plates, with a yellow background and with, in the center, the margherita. In the province of Florence, and in particular in Montelupo Fiorentino and Sesto Fiorentino, the production of decorative plates, tankards, vases and other objects with traditional shapes and decorations is still flourishing, inspired above all by the historic manufactures of Doccia that were exported from Sesto all over the world.
CERAMICS AND TERRACOTTA IN
[Abruzzo•Basilicata] [Calabria•Campania] [Emilia•Latium•Liguria]
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