04/11/2021
What do Tuscany and ceramics have in common?
Tuscany boast an important and unique tradition along with its beautiful landscapes, good food and great history: ceramic production. In this area, the ancient art of molding the earthy material and giving it shape, of enriching an idea with color and decoration, of transforming an intuition into an object, is not just about manufacturing, it’s about cultural tradition.
Ceramics is the name of any household or art products made of clay or mixtures containing clay, kilned or dried in the sun. Ceramics include pottery, terracotta, majolica, faience, stone mass, porcelain.
In Italy, with the fall of the Roman Empire, the highly developed pottery craft ceased to exist. Until the 13th century, only rough pots were made with the simplest drawings scrawled on them. Since the second half of the 15th century, the quality of Italian pottery has improved markedly.
The development of painted majolica (pewter-glazed pottery) marked the transition of Italian ceramics from the rough medieval stage to the highly professional art of the Renaissance. Majolica was made from thin soft clay; finished products were coated with a whitish opaque tin glaze and painted with paints that successfully withstood high-temperature firing, and after the final coating with a transparent alkaline glaze, they became softer in color.
This pottery spread throughout Italy. They developed specific styles and techniques for painting clouds, landscapes, multi-figure compositions and arabesques.
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