History of Ceramics in Tuscany

The territory around Florence and Prato

The territories around Florence and Prato are so similar that they can be examined together. Infact Prato was the first city to become part of what later became the Florentine State.
In this area, the most populated in the region, there are not only the production centres of Borgo San Lorenzo, Impruneta, Montelupo, Sesto
Fiorentino and Signa, to which we have dedicated individual chapters, but various types of ceramic work (majolica, kitchen ware etc.) can also be found in these two  major cities.
Written evidence shows how immigrant potters from the Montalbano district of Bacchereto, were already working in Florence from the second half of the 14th century. This was perhaps the very first manufacturing centre in the area. In Florence, the immigration from Bacchereto was later followed by that from Montelupo, Impruneta and other places in the territory of Florence and Prato. The majority of potters who came from the surrounding countryside settled in buildings belonging to monasteries and hospitals – the main owners of housing property in the city – it was then normal that they should become their suppliers. The increasingly growing commissions from hospitals (Santa Maria Nuova, l’Ospedale degli Innocenti etc.) and the convents (Santa Maria Novella, Santissima Annunziata, San Marco etc.) thus made the newcomers into “house potters”: a large part of the production of kilns in Florence – often added to by the production of the kilns of their relatives in the countryside, their place of origin – went to these institutions.
An intricate relationship grew between potters from the countryside and the city of Florence in the second half of the 14th century. This privileged relationship, between city institutions and potters, and the ever growing commissions which these received from the ruling classes, created a “common language” – a koiné based on the same taste for decoration, but founded also on a widely shared technology – which is particularly noticeable here compared to the other three areas in Tuscany.

The manufacture of majolica was accompanied in the Florentine area by widespread production of coarse earthenware which was concentrated, if not in real and proper centres of production, at least in places which were particularly suitable.
Among these centres chosen for the production of terracotta Impruneta and Montelupo stand out. Here they manufactured jars and large pots, basins and jugs for transporting and storing water. Objects of this nature, produced using a wheel, were also made in Bacchereto. In Figline near Prato, basins for household use (called “figlinesi” in fact) were traditionally made on a potter's wheel, by carving out the inside of the receptacle pressed into a mould. There are records to show that this age-old method was being used in Montelupo, too. A manufacture of water jugs is also recorded in Montaione, in Valdelsa, better known for its glass production, while jars for storing oil were made in Spazzavento and in Montevettolini, both in the Pistoia area.

The production of coarse ceramics was a very specialized skill, even though it was sometimes carried out in country kilns. In Impruneta in particular, they began quite early on to exploit clay deposits which ensured a certain durability in the manufactured product (traces of local pottery date back to the first few years of the 14th century). Having reached a degree of technical excellence – and having become the best known manufacturers of coarse clay in Tuscany – potters in Impruneta were the originators, at the start of the 15th century, of the constant adapting of forms, which transformed such utility objects as Tuscan jars and plant pots into objects used also for aesthetic purposes, specially to embellish gardens.
Only during the course of the 19th century, with the introduction of jugs for the transport and storage of water (“mezzine”, half measure receptacle) in metal and with the manufacture of basins glazed and speckled with green colouring, the use of terracotta for this type of household utensil was finally abandoned.
Fine ceramics also in smaller centres
As well as Florence, Prato and Pistoia, glazed ceramics were produced in the 15th and 16th centuries in smaller centres.

Particular mention should be made in the history of ceramics of the kiln at Cafaggiolo, a fortified villa which belonged to a supposedly lower class branch of the Medici family. This is where members of a family of potters from Montelupo came to live towards the end of the 15th century. These were descendents of Filippo di Dimitri, known also by the name of “Schiavone” since he came originally from Zagreb in Croatia. Some of the finest Italian pieces of majolica of the Renaissance period have been attributed to the kilns at Cafaggiolo, some of which were skillfully decorated with “lustro metallico” (metal lustre). The kilns of Cafaggiolo appear to have been in use right until about 1580, and they probably made use of other outside ovens, such as Galliano, the ancient home of the Ubaldini family, close to the villa.

Other majolica production centres worth mentioning are Mercatale Val di Pesa, where potters who came from Montelupo and Bacchereto worked; the same situation is recorded in Pontorme and Empoli, two well populated walled towns in Valdarno. Empoli was where attempts were made to revive and improve production in Tuscany between the second half of the 17th century and the 18th century: in 1765, in fact, Domenico Lorenzo Levantino from Albisola opened a majolica factory which went on operating until about 1820. During those years the Ginori family in Doccia di Sesto Fiorentino, produced quality majolica as well as their usual production of porcelain.
The venture of the marquis Carlo had begun in 1737 and the Manifattura Ginori di Doccia can boast of being the second place in Europe to produce porcelain.

The great spread of engobing which is recorded as starting from the middle of the 16th century caused difficulties for centres like Montelupo or those “ateliers” like Cafaggiolo where majolica manufacture was concentrated. 16th century inflation and subsequently, European scale economic recession which was felt in Tuscany at the beginning of the “general crisis” from 1618 to 1621, favoured the spread of engobed tableware with lead glaze, cheaper than glazed ceramics. Among the centres which showed a considerable increase in the production of engobed ceramics (especially sgraffitoed and painted) we have to mention Castelfiorentino, Pontorme, Empoli and Fucecchio. In these places work in ceramics lasted for almost three centuries (from the 15th to the 18th century), and occasionally included the manufacture of terracotta objects and kitchen utensils.
The spread of kitchenware in the Florence area as a large production in series happened only at the beginning of the 18th century, especially in small towns dotted along the river Arno.
A considerable quantity of pots, pans and “scaldini” (a kind of small warmer) with lead glazing was produced at that time in Montelupo and in nearby Capraia, as well as in Pontorme and Fucecchio, while in the Pistoia area there were kilns operating in Pescia.
Already halfway through the 18th century, the manufacture of this type of utensil became a forefront sector in the economy, and due to the contemporary crisis in traditional Tuscan majolica, in a very short time surpassed both in total figures and in actual quantity the proceeds from glazed products.

As was mentioned earlier, the abandoning of coarse terracotta used in manufacturing receptacles for household use, substituted by new glazed ware, produced a considerable growth in this sector, but at the same time it encouraged an excessive use of lead covering. The habit of using lead (also called “cristallina”) became so ingrained in the kilns of Montelupo and Capraia, that it created no small problem for the elimination of glazed products – now known to be toxic – which had gained ground as “secondary” goods compared to imported earthenware, and more generally with respect to fine tableware.
While this industry was going through a difficult technological crisis towards the end of the 19th century, which it only overcame thanks to the work of new paint factories which were able to reduce the toxicity of the paint and glazing materials used in the manufacturing process, Florence was discovering its ancient medieval and Renaissance traditions, enriching this culture with the stately and elegant style which was later termed “historicism”. The new taste, made famous right from the 1840s by painters from the Manifattura di Doccia and, in Siena by Bernardino Pepi, reached its apex in the Florentine factory of the Cantagalli.

Fausto Berti

• INTRODUCING THE HISTORY OF CERAMICS IN TUSCANY
• A summary
• THE AREAS
• Arezzo
• Firenze - Prato
• Pisa
• Siena

• Terre di Toscana in Florence area
• BORGO SAN LORENZO
• IMPRUNETA
• MONTELUPO FIORENTINO
• SESTO FIORENTINO

• Terre di Toscana in Prato area
• CARMIGNANO

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