Before you close the deal of your life and pay an incredibly low price for what looks like a stunning piece of Deruta pottery, you may want to take a few minutes and learn how to spot fake Italian ceramics.
Lots of nice looking ceramic pieces are machine stamped and sold as original handmade Italian ceramics. Possibly from reputable regions, like Deruta.
We have just visited Eugenio Ricciarelli in his studio in Deruta and he was about to open his kiln after the firing. It was loaded with lovely serving bowls, fruit bowls and other geometric pottery.
We took some pictures to show you one of the most breathtaking moments in the life of a pottery maker: will everything be safe and sound? By Tiziana Manzetti
Iridescenze – Lusterware in the 20th century
Until December 31, 2009
The exhibition features luster pottery by Alpinolo Magnini, Ubaldo Grazia, Edgardo Abbozzo and their followers, some of them still active in Deruta.
Together with Angelo Micheletti and Francesco Briganti, Alpinolo Magnini was the artist who made the revival of ceramic art in Deruta possible and encouraged its first steps into modern age.
A skilled painter and an excellent ceramicist himself, he actively supported the work of his fellow artists and contributed to the education of a new generation of pottery makers as the first Director of the newly founded Museum of Ceramics and also as Director of the School of Ceramics.
Ubaldo Grazia adopted a different approach to the relaunch of Deruta pottery. He looked for inspiration at the Renaissance pottery that had made Deruta so famous in the 15th and 16th century and started from there. In 1921 he founded his own pottery factory, still one of the most important in town.
July 4 – August 4, 2008
Spoleto – Italy
ADI – Industrial Design Association – has chosen a very intriguing subject to celebrate the opening of a new branch in Umbria: Food Design.
Important designers, a famous chef and a group of Deruta potters joined their creative skills to set up an exhibition that shows how simple and natural ingredients can be turned into creative, tasty food and how tasty food can be arranged into unique plates for a multi-sensory experience.
The key characters of the event are local food (km0) and Deruta ceramic plates, all created by the International School of Ceramic Art “Romano Ranieri” and hand painted by the School artists and other potters.
Deruta Mayor has recently launched a program to stop the spread of counterfeit ceramics, inexpensive industrial products mostly made in China or Eastern Europe and marked “Made in Deruta” or even “Handmade in Deruta”.
Let us take a step back for a moment and look at the bigger picture.
Deruta pottery is facing the worst economic downturn since the 19th century, due to a major slow down in orders from the US. Ceramics are Deruta key asset. Nowhere else in Italy there is such a concentration of pottery makers and so talented ones, too. A crisis in the pottery production cannot but involve the whole town.
June 1-15, 2008
Deruta – Italy
Art exhibitions,
live performances, demonstrations and activities will be the ingredients of “The Magic of Ceramic Art”, a highly anticipated art & entertainment festival to be held in Deruta from June 1st.
Deruta potters, Italian and International artists, music players, scholars and visitors from all over the world will get together to celebrate the living heritage of one of the most important ceramic centers in the world.
The festival program is very exciting, indeed.
The 1st edition of Deruta Art: Biennale Exhibition of Contemporary Art will bring together 30 Umbrian and International artists, whose paintings, sculptures and visual artworks will be displayed in the former building of Maioliche Deruta, a factory which marked the revival of Deruta ceramics at the beginning of the 20th century.