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Wandering around the vintage booths at the recent Mercanteinfiera fair, we came across a wide range of ceramic objects: plates, saucers, tea sets, vases, as well as polychrome lamps and sculptures that stood out on sideboards, tables and bookcases, to underline a trend in vintage collecting that appraises handmade objects.
We turn the spotlight on handcrafted ceramics because this is a field in which, unlike other areas of design, projects start from the material, from its study, passing through the act of shaping it and decorating it, up to the final firing: a mix of skilful gestures and techniques handed down for generations, which give life to unique objects, witnesses of the hands and the territory behind them.
Very often, the tradition of ceramics has matched with the creativity of modern and contemporary artists, leading to extremely successful and precious pieces, such as Picasso's Vallauris pottery, or the Albisola ceramic sculptures shaped by Lucio Fontana. Among the less known Italian manufacturers, many ceramics brands established significant partnerships with the art world; one of them is Ceramiche Rometti, a company that in the 1930s boasted in its creative team artists such as Corrado Cagli, who drew elegant figures and Umbrian stylized
Now managed by collector and ceramic expert Massimo Monini, Rometti was founded by ceramist Settimio Rometti in 1927 in the medieval city of Umbertide, in the heart of Umbria, and rises not far from a cave dating back to the Roman period, from which the clay of his artefacts derives. We focus on the 1930s because this is the period in which the brand's production, highly appreciated for its clean lines, distinguished itself for the use of the iridescent "nero fratta" enamel, as well as for the recurring juxtapositions between geometric shapes and colors that became the company's trademark, such as the white-black, black-orange, blue-white and yellow-black pairs.
A little further north in Florence, the 1930s were marking the apex of success for another illustrious manufacturer, Zaccagnini: the factory was in fact commissioned by The Walt Disney Company to make a series of statuettes depicting Disney's most famous cartoons, which were hand-decorated and modeled by Mario Bandini. Highly sought after and almost impossible to find, the first examples of these collecting evergreens were the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs statuettes, sold at the national preview of the movie in Florence, at the Cinema Teatro Verdi. And to think that the founder of the brand Ugo Zaccagnini, a former modeler at Richard-Ginori, was originally known for his Art Nouveau ceramics, terracotta and majolica pieces! Since 1937, when the company was lead by Ugo's son Urbano, Zaccagnini has consolidated its international fame, so much so that in 1950 some of its ceramics were exhibited at the Italian craft exhibition "Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today" at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. The 1950s marked Zaccagnini's direction towards a series of artistic collections such as the “Swedish”, deeply inspired by abstract art.
From trendy graphic effects to the avant-garde art of the 20th century, we chose to tell you a bit more about two factories that reflect a vast number of artisan realities, from the best known to the forgotten or no longer existing, whose know-how captured the taste of an era conveying it into timeless collectibles. Don't miss the next intOndo stories dedicated to rediscovered vintage brands!
