Today's Potters Preserve Tradition
By Morris Dye
For Romano Rampini, proprietor of the Rampini pottery workshop in the rolling hill country south of Florence, the art of making high-quality dinnerware and decorative ceramics is a family affair.
"Together with my father, we started this workshop. He has experience in ceramics-making, as he was born in Gubbio, where almost everybody for two or three centuries used to be a potter," Rampini says. "My uncle, my cousins, they are all potters."
Gubbio is one of several small towns scattered throughout the Italian regions of Umbria, Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna that have long been associated with a traditional style of earthenware called maiolica, (My-o-lik-a) characterized by colorful designs and figures painted by hand on an opaque background of white, tin-based glaze. The maiolica tradition is kept alive today at Ceramiche Rampini and dozens of similar family-owned workshops where skilled artists continue to produce Italian Renaissance designs, one piece at a time.
According to Laura Coyle, curator of European arts at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., maiolica originated with ceramic techniques imported to Italy from Moorish Spain as early as the 14th century. Later, artists of the Italian Renaissance used these techniques to develop a highly refined decorative style much prized by well-heeled arts patrons of the 16th century.
"We have a different division now between the fine arts and the decorative arts," Coyle says. "During the Renaissance, things like pottery and tapestry and furniture were considered just as valuable as what we consider to be fine art painting and sculpture. The decorative arts had a much higher stature than they do now."
Coyle adds that many of the finer examples of Renaissance plates, ewers (vase-shaped jugs) and other ceramic items were not made for utilitarian purposes.
"They were meant to be ritual objects for particular life events such as marriages or the birth of a son."
While meticulous reproductions of these ritual objects are available, today's maiolica workshops also produce a selection of dishes and kitchenware using lead-free glazes that are appropriate for everyday use in contemporary homes.
At San Francisco-based Biordi Art Imports, for example, which has been importing maiolica to the United States since 1946, shoppers can choose from an extensive catalog of dinnerware in some 75 different patterns, most crafted in the Umbrian village of Deruta.
"We emphasize classical designs," owner Gianfranco Savio says. "For instance, Antico Deruta pattern is an elegant deep-blue border design. This design is found on an old floor in the main church in Deruta. Orvieto is a medieval design from Orvieto that they have reinterpreted a little bit by adding a rooster. The Siena pattern is a reproduction from a 13th-century design on the marble floor of the Siena Cathedral."
As an alternative to these elaborate traditional motifs, most of Biordi's dinnerware patterns also are available in simplified "border design" versions that are less costly than the traditional patterns, and may be more compatible with modern interiors.
However, Savio advises his customers not to be afraid of mixing old and new styles. "I'm very comfortable in saying that even the most modern house needs some connection to the past," he says.
Savio says custom orders based on any Biordi pattern can be delivered within five or six months, including plates and bowls in various shapes and sizes, serving bowls and platters, mugs and goblets, utensil holders, biscotti jars, garlic jars, even backsplashes for the kitchen.
Given the labor-intensive process involved in its production, maiolica is generally more expensive than mass-produced china, with most U.S. retailers charging anywhere from about $125 to $275 for a typical three-piece place setting consisting of a dinner plate, pasta/soup bowl and salad plate. Prices can be significantly lower for items purchased directly from the workshops and showrooms in Italy, but only if you are able to carry your purchases home to avoid shipping and insurance charges.
Even so, Romano Rampini believes that his products should not be locked away and brought out only for special occasions. "We like ceramics that not only are, we hope, beautiful, but can be used daily on the table," he says. Biordi's Savio concurs. "Most of our customers who know how to handle maiolica use those dishes every day," he says. "I must stress the fact that you have to treat them with a great deal of respect. You don't put them in the oven. You don't put them in the microwave. But they are very good quality, and if you treat them well, they will last you a lifetime."
"Maiolica is such a beautiful thing," Coyle adds. "Its appeal has lasted for 500 years. It doesn't look like it's going to go out of style any time soon."
For more information on locating hand-painted Italian ceramics, go to www.Biordi.com
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