Audrey Cooper on wed 19 apr 00
Hi, I am going to Italy for ten days and would love to explore pottery. If
anyone has any suggestions for Florence, Venice and Cinque Terre, I would
really appreciate it.
thanks Audrey
Russel Fouts on thu 20 apr 00
Audrey,
>>Hi, I am going to Italy for ten days and would love to explore pottery.
If anyone has any suggestions for Florence, Venice and Cinque Terre, I would
really appreciate it. thanks Audrey <<
Visit Pietro Maddalena, his web page is www.pietro.net
Nice guy, nice pots, nice workshop program.
Russel
Russel Fouts
Mes Potes & Mes Pots
Brussels, Belgium
Tel: +32 2 223 02 75
Mobile: +32 476 55 38 75
Http://www.mypots.com
http://www.Japan-Net.ne.jp/~iwcat
Alison Hamilton on sat 22 apr 00
Hi Audrey,
Well, I've managed to get to Italy twice, but have yet to see either
Florence or Venice. However, last summer, I did get to Cinque Terre.
For those of you who are interested, Cinque Terre is an area of five
villages perched along these cliffs in the region of Liguria, the
Italian Riviera. I believe that originally these villages were not
linked to roads and paths were created along the cliffs for villagers to
travel from one town to another. The paths are now formalized walking
paths and yes, roads do reach Cinque Terre. Resist the temptation at
all costs to view the sea as you crank the steering wheel around hairpin
turns! It's difficult to resist, believe me!!
And take good walking shoes - everything is either up or down in Italy,
especially in Cinque Terre where instead of cars parked along the main
street, you see fishing boats.
As for pottery though, I didn't see much of it there. There were tiles
sold everywhere which had pictures of different professions painted on
them with the word in Italian of what the profession was. And in one of
the first villages, there was a potter with his wheel out in front of
his store.
If you get to the region of Umbria, you could check out the town of
Deruta which is promoted as being the "capital" of Italian ceramics. To
be completely honest, I was kind of disappointed in the quality of the
work there, but there are some huge majolica workshops (almost
factories) near the highway where you can wander around and watch
artists painting and drawing on ware and check out the spray booths
which are the size of a few garages.
I did wander into one lovely little shop which was carved into the
hillside of the old town. To get into the show area, you had to walk
down a long, steep flight of stairs carved into the rock. Their show
room was basically like a cave! The potter who owned the store, showed
me the kiln carved out of that rock which had been fired from 1,200 A.D
up through the 1940's. It was on 3 levels - the bottom hole was for the
fire, the middle section was for the air (the floor of this section was
made out of bricks in an open gridlock pattern suspended over the firing
section) and the area above that was for the ware. The really wild
thing about this part was that it was practically a whole story high!!
Across the dirt floor from this area was another "hole in the wall" from
where the dirt had been removed to cover the kiln when firing.
If that kiln could talk, imagine its stories .....
Have a wonderful trip!
ciao,
Alison Hamilton
Trout Lake
Dorset, Ontario
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