What if the millenary tradition of Caltagirone ceramics may be due in large part to the nature of the underlying terrain?
Walking through its city centre we find repeated references to this artisanship. Majolica, ceramic vases and pine-cones adorn the streets. Street-art evokes Sicilian symbols like the legendary moorish heads.
From the top of the old town is possible to look at the landscape to the north, green slopes and grey badlands. Clayey terrain has been carved away by rain, which in time has created badlands, erosional forms typically found in claystone. Geometries that remind the veins of a leaf.
“The art of pottery is born right here, from this mountain,” says Giampiero Buscemi, a local ceramist, while we look at the badlands from San Giorgio viewpoint. “It contributed to the town’s evolution.”
To make pottery and ceramics people needed kaolinite-rich clay and abundant wood. Here you can see both elements. One to get the raw material and the other to cook it.
Today’s clay is imported from Tuscany, to satisfy all needs in the local craftsmanship. However, in the beginning, clay was taken from these very outcrops, cooked in wood-fired ovens, shaped in many forms to make every day’s objects, like oil lamps and honey jars.
“Caltagirone made poorer ceramics and pottery. Before the 1950s-60s, they weren’t called ceramists but ‘cannatari’ – a dialect word for makers of wine jugs. And the job was ‘camurriusu’ – a dialect word for dull, tedious.
In the early 20th century, this tradition was critically endangered. Only few cannatari were left.
But that’s when the craft became an art. Schools and institutions were founded by people like Don Luigi Sturzo, a priest and politician native of Caltagirone. Eventually the ovens for the ceramics never had shut down.
Today, Caltagirone produces one of the finest ceramics in Italy.
“The art of pottery is born right here, from this mountain,” says Giampiero Buscemi, a local ceramist, while we look at the badlands from San Giorgio viewpoint. “It contributed to the town’s evolution.”
To make pottery and ceramics people needed kaolinite-rich clay and abundant wood. Here you can see both elements. One to get the raw material and the other to cook it.
Today’s clay is imported from Tuscany, to satisfy all needs in the local craftsmanship. However, in the beginning, clay was taken from these very outcrops, cooked in wood-fired ovens, shaped in many forms to make every day’s objects, like oil lamps and honey jars.
“Caltagirone made poorer ceramics and pottery. Before the 1950s-60s, they weren’t called ceramists but ‘cannatari’ – a dialect word for makers of wine jugs. And the job was ‘camurriusu’ – a dialect word for dull, tedious.
In the early 20th century, this tradition was critically endangered. Only few cannatari were left.
But that’s when the craft became an art. Schools and institutions were founded by people like Don Luigi Sturzo, a priest and politician native of Caltagirone. Eventually the ovens for the ceramics never had shut down.
Today, Caltagirone produces one of the finest ceramics in Italy.
Quite often, very little remains of past civilizations except stones and pottery. We’ve noticed it repeatedly during our trip. To appreciate this, just enter any archeological museum.
Thanks to tiny pottery shards we can reconstruct commercial and cultural ties of ancient societies.
What about the future then?
If we were wiped out by a nuclear conflict, what would be left for future civilizations that want to study our way of life? All the digital information would disappear. This very post as much as every message and e-mail. Just concrete things will remain, things they can touch.
What will they deduce by studying the ceramics from Caltagirone?
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