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By the time the
whirlwind invasion of barbarians hit the ruins of the Roman empire,
there had been little left of Italian manufacture.
Having been transferred to the provinces centuries earlier, ceramic
art in these places had lost the extraordinary inventiveness seen in
the splendour of the glowing “vasi corallini” (coral red vases) in
Arezzo at the beginning of the second half of the 1st century B.C.
By the end of the 4th and 5th centuries townspeople in the Peninsula,
more used to luxury than country people, had become resigned to
making do with tableware made outside the city borders. This was
covered in a yellowish paint which had little to do with that
brilliant red, characteristic of the fine “sigillata italica”,
typical of the Roman period.
During the occupation
of Tuscany by Goths and Lombards, the production of ceramics fell to
an all-time low in quality, becoming strictly utilitarian, more to
the taste of these predominantly nomadic and warlike people who had
imposed their culture on this area.
Nevertheless, the search for quality can still be seen in the early
medieval Tuscan kitchen utensils and tableware, in the still refined
moulding technique, in remaining traces of red engobing and finally,
in the use of lead glazing dappled over the surface of the vessels,
a complete novelty in the western world.
Having patiently collected evidence of this type of production,
medievalist archaeologists are reconstructing the methods used in
the production of earthenware in Tuscany. Until the 12th century,
this earthenware manufacture seems to have been found equally in
town and country. Nor did there appear to be individual places which
stood out as being major exporters.
It was in fact this
kind of “revolution”, marked by the start of production using a slip
glaze under lead glazing (“graffita tirrenica”) and glazed ceramic
ware (“protomajolica”), and whose beginnings can be traced back to
around 1180, that created a climate favourable to the concentration
of this activity in a smaller number of towns. These were fortunate
in having access to fuel and raw materials, and even more fortunate
in having various means of communication including rivers, providing
easy access to markets in other regions and abroad.
From about 1240, with the so-called “archaic majolica”, the
workshops which produced ceramic tableware underwent a sudden change
for the better. The production, in large quantities, of pottery with
a silicon-metallic covering (with lead glaze and tin enamel) and the
manufacture of colours through copper and manganese oxides, required
not only new skills, but also suitable implements (a “riverberatory
furnace” that is, a kiln where heat is reflected) which meant kilns
with a more complicated structure. The use of imported raw materials
(tin) also meant that manufacturers had to have a closer tie with
the market and with the financial middlemen (merchants) and this
created an unprecedented close connection between capital and
craftsmen.
After the initial
stages in the 13th century, it was in the 14th and 15th centuries,
with the rapid increase in the variety of products, that the
protagonists of our publication, “ceramic production centres” began
to play an important role in history.
Those places that is, where there was a concentration of factories
producing earthenware objects both for use locally and for export to
markets in other regions and abroad.
This historic course of events, much the same for all these areas,
and which was behind the development of ceramic production in
various centres in Tuscany, does not include the larger cities.
Cities which became capitals of provinces, after dominating the
others in pre-industrial times (politically, administratively etc.),
since territories of various size and extension, known as “contadi”
(countryside surrounding a town) were under their jurisdiction.
This refers to cities such as Pisa, Siena and Florence, where
ceramics were widely produced even though sometimes production came
to a halt (as in Florence and Pisa). A study which chooses to give a
full account of a regional reality cannot, therefore, forget these
places. Here, among other things, fundamentally important
experiences for the development of ceramic art in Tuscany took
place: for example, it was in Pisa that the first kilns for the
firing of archaic majolica, as well as the late medieval engobed
ceramics were set up.
This guide does not set out to relate all the aspects of the history
of ceramics in Tuscany, but aims rather to represent a handy guide
to help discover places in this region dedicated to the potter’s art
– which often coincide with modern small to medium towns. The reason
why we chose places in the country, giving them such importance, is
because this allows us to throw light on a matter of fundamental
historic importance: the different characteristics of each of these
places where the manufacture of ceramics was concentrated in the
late Middle Ages.
The main point here is mainly to do with the market. Producing ceramics in a city meant in fact, in a pre-industrial age, working for a relatively large home market, to supply not only hardware stores and those selling household utensils (retailers) within the city walls, but also hospitals, convents in the city and noble and influential families, for whom tableware was manufactured on commission. Rural potters had to produce goods for various types of faraway markets, and any success in their long-distance trade depended not only on their goods reaching the nearest cities and small towns, but also on export to destinations both in other regions or other countries which they could supply. We know that such favourable conditions were difficult to create. In the first place the city defended its own economic activities, maintaining the safety cordon of city guilds against intrusion from outside. This is substantiated by a mass of evidence in the archives both in Tuscany and other regions.
It was not enough for
the cities to impose heavy taxes (making it compulsory to enlist in
the registers of city arts, creating special taxes which weighed
heavily on imports etc.) to stem the fierce attack of rural potters.
Despite these efforts, in fact, these potters entered the cities,
and offered their services to hospitals and convents where they soon
became “house potters”; their relatives opened china and ceramic
shops and maintained a close connection with their home kilns for
their supplies. In this way they justified the presence of these
goods in city markets.
The merchants who carried on their business in the city but owned
vast areas of land in the rural areas saw clearly how this craft
could be practised better outside the city walls: here there was
easy access to raw materials and fuel, labour was cheaper and the
association of guilds had no control over the running of these
workshops.
And so it was in the
rural centres – paradoxically, so to speak – and not in the cities,
that a marriage took place between the merchants’ capital and the
potters’ craft. This raised the production to an almost industrial
level, that is, a production system which was still segmented
according to a craftsman’s logic but where, nevertheless, all the
production units and all the processes of production were
interconnected through companies aimed at satisfying their clients,
the merchant-entrepreneurs.
The power of the guilds, however strong, could not in fact oppose
the real need for an unbroken chain of activities.
This meant that the autonomy of the workshop was often given up in
favour of specialization, the beginnings of a new (and at the time
unknown) relationships of interdependence.
A clear similarity between the case of Montelupo
and that of Minises, a small Spanish town in the area around
Valencia is not a coincidence. Both these centres dominated the
Mediterranean market for majolica over a long period of time.
In Spain it was the Boils family who sustained local production with
private capital, encouraging it to conquer foreign markets, and in
the same way, Montelupo potters were equally successful thanks to
the commercial network of the Antinori family and to the trust they
set up for commerce outside the region.
We can safely say, then, that the common feature of Tuscan
manufacturing centres, which will be dealt with in subsequent pages,
consisted precisely in having always produced ceramics for an
external market, quite different from the nearby local markets which
potters in major cities supplied. Despite this common feature,
clearly each of these places has its own unmistakable
characteristics, which complicates any effort to include it in a
more general category.
Some of these centres
of production, like Impruneta and Montelupo, show, for example, a
historic continuity which, notwithstanding evidence of difficult
times, is virtually uninterrupted for as long as seven centuries,
occupying the whole chronological span of the story of the
“production centres”; while others, in which the manufacture of
ceramics did not play a predominant part in the local economy, have
a less straightforward line of development, where a halt would
follow closely on an equally unexpectedly promising start.
Despite all this, it is easy to see how, after a sufficient lapse of
time, work with clay promptly returned and new kilns were built.
These too, then, were centres which had a “vocation” for this craft,
where work in ceramics followed the same chronological path,
starting its adventure between the 14th and 15th centuries and
becoming consolidated in the following century.
The general crisis in
the 17th century put to the test all these traditions of production
which could by now be considered centuries-old, causing them in some
cases to cease altogether (as in the case of Pomarance, for
example). The most difficult time for all production centres in
Italy was between the 17th and 18th centuries. Some, on the other
hand, were able to react positively to this unfavourable climate,
caused also by a radical change in technology and even the geography
of world economy, by creating new activities which, after an
uncertain beginning, lasted up to the middle of the 18th century and
managed to tag onto the “takeoff” in Italian industry but was no
different from the long-term process described briefly above.
Attempts at innovation and productive revival As a result of the
crisis which hit traditional craftsmanship there seemed to be a need
to introduce innovations into ceramic manufacture, by looking
closely at the situation, both in Tuscany and other regions where
this craft was still being practised with success. Potters from
Liguria (in Savona and Albisola) began to move to Tuscany, setting
up kilns in Lucca, San Quirico d’Orcia and Empoli.
From 1650 to 1760, apart from the presence in Tuscany of these skillful potters from west Liguria (but also Bartolomeo Terchi from Lazio), what needs to be specially pointed out is the unmistakable mobility of regional labour which, starting out from traditional centres (for example from Asciano), moved to places which had hitherto been only marginally involved in ceramic work. These new firms could only be set up thanks to the support of financial backers who, facing an increasingly heavy dependence on the part of Tuscany on imported goods (a great deal of Delft majolica and socalled “vasellame di Genova” (Genoese pottery) from Savona and Albisola was imported), showed interest in the opening for a revival in quality production during the 18th century.
Devoid of its
extraordinary cultural context, the adventure which led the marquis
Carlo Ginori in 1737 to manufacture porcelain in Doccia in Sesto
Fiorentino, can also be considered an episode in this search for
innovation in traditional regional ceramics. The origins of the
Manifattura di Doccia can be said to be similar to the undertaking
of Chigi in San Quirico d’Orcia.
The same can be said for the subsequent building (with capital from
Pietro Dazzi?) of a kiln in Empoli by Domenico Lorenzo Levantino, or
even the setting up of the Catrosse manufacture in Cortona, in the
villa belonging to the Venuti family. Just how much these attempts
can be considered part of an even larger phenomenon – which fits in
well with the reawakening in an Italy where illuminism was not yet
established, but already shaken by a great desire for reform and
modernization – can be seen in the personal life story of the first
historian of this art, Giovambattista Passeri (1694-1780), and in
particular in his commitment to improving the lot of ceramic work in
Pesaro, Deruta and Urbino. He even tried to make porcelain himself.
Many attempts to renew
the production of earthenware in Tuscany are unknown because there
is hardly more than very slight evidence to be found in archives.
These attempts, however were not always as successful as they
probably deserved to be, due to insurmountable obstacles, especially
where the effort was made in towns which could not boast of having a
deep rooted past like older production centres.
We have already spoken of how, once this difficult stage which
lasted about two centuries (1630-1830) was over, the manufacture of
ceramics slowly became well established in centres which were still
operating, so much as to see a considerable increase in the last two
decades of the twentieth century and continue into the twenty-first
century. The industrial “takeoff” in Italy, however, did not only
allow the places where this tradition had established roots to
revive barely surviving activities.
It also gave an opportunity to entrepreneurs who were aware of the
new cultural climate which searched for aesthetic values and
encouraged the applied arts, to increase ceramic work by building
new factories. This is what Bondi did, transforming a brick factory
into a refined artistic manufacture in Signa, and so did the Chini
family in Borgo San Lorenzo, after a brief spell in Florence: we
could also add the Milani family, who began to work in Montopoli
only a few decades later.
This web site is dedicated to the discovery of the deep roots of the
potter’s craft in Tuscany and to the identity of some of the areas
in this region dedicated to the various forms of earthenware craft.
We will also deal with the attempts to make this age-old art more
modern and more attractive, an art which saw the dedication, from
the 18th century onwards, of many worthy and generous people. These
pages are an invitation to get to know the story of places and
people through the changing kaleidoscope of the shapes and colours
of ceramics.
Fausto Berti
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