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.
