There must be a reason that ceramics have been a part of human history since prehistoric times. Ductile and manageable, it is the raw material used to create numerous useful as well as artistic objects. In its various forms (ceramic, tile, porcelain…), ceramics production has touched many areas of our country.
The southern regions learned from Greece’s precious heritage and since then have been producing fine ceramic works. The central regions did the same but they owe their ancient knowledge to the Etruscans.
Orvieto, Siena and Faenza have been important production centres since the Middle Ages. Florence, where ceramics have been produced since the twelfth century, was already a leader in this art during the Medici era, when Grand Duke Francesco I had a workshop and kiln in the Boboli Gardens to produce majolica. In the mid-eighteenth century, the Carlo Ginori (1737) Factory first produced majolica and then porcelain.
In Umbria, between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, the centres Urbania (recognized in ’94 as a production area of artistic and traditional ceramics by the AICC, Italian Association of Ceramics Cities), Casteldurante, Urbino and Pesaro, are also important. There, they still produce, in the words of D’Annunzio, “ancient shapes of inimitable grace”.
Even today, the ceramics of Deruta have a prestigious history, taking their inspiration from the second half of the 1400s to the end of the 1600s.
The north has renowned ceramics centres such as Savona and Albisola in Liguria, where this craft has ancient origins due to the numerous basins of clay found in this territory. Then there are the ceramics of Veneto, whose golden moment was in the 1700s, thanks to the discovery in Europe of the secret to making porcelain.