Blog

Why We Still Wedge Clay by Hand in 2024

Most studios in the Emilia-Romagna region switched to mechanical pugmills years ago. We did too, briefly, back in 2011, when my father Giorgio bought a second-hand machine from a closing workshop in Imola. It lasted eighteen months before we quietly moved it to a corner of the storage room, where it still sits under a tarpaulin. The problem was not the machine itself. The problem was what we lost in the transition: the ability to feel air pockets, small stones, and inconsistencies in plasticity before the clay ever touched the wheel.

Wedging by hand takes about eight minutes per kilogram. For a production run of forty pieces, that adds up. But our thrower, Marta, has been doing this since she was an apprentice at a bottega in Faenza in 1998, and she can tell from the resistance alone whether the batch of Valdichiana stoneware we received that week is running wetter than usual. No sensor reads that. Her hands do.

We are not arguing that technology is bad. We are saying that some steps reward patience, and this is one of them.

The Tin-Glaze Tradition in Faenza: A Short History We Live Every Day

Faenza gave the world the word faience. That is not a marketing line, it is a historical fact that shapes every decision we make in this workshop. By the fifteenth century, the kilns along the Lamone river were producing tin-glazed earthenware that ended up in the courts of Florence and Ferrara. The opaque white surface created by tin oxide in the glaze allowed painters to work directly on the piece before firing, almost like working on a whiteboard that would then become permanent at 980 degrees Celsius.

We still use a version of that process. Our base glaze formula has been adjusted over the decades, but the core logic, tin oxide suspended in a lead-free frit, suspended in water, applied by dipping, has not changed in its essentials since Giorgio's grandfather Aldo set up the first proper kiln in this building in 1947. When a visitor from a ceramics school in Eindhoven came through last spring, she spent two hours just looking at our glaze notebooks from the 1960s. Sixty pages of handwritten specific gravity readings, firing temperatures, and small sketches of colour results. That archive is one of our most serious assets.

What "Maiolica Blue" Actually Means

People often ask why our cobalt decoration looks different from pieces they have seen elsewhere. The short answer is that cobalt oxide concentration matters enormously, and so does the thickness of the tin-glaze layer beneath it. Apply the oxide too thickly and the blue bleeds at the edges during firing. Apply the glaze too thin and the colour sinks and goes flat. Getting it right is a calibration that Marta and our decorator Emilio have been refining together for about seven years. The pieces they produce now have a depth that earlier batches, frankly, did not.

Our New Batch of Raku: What Went Wrong and What We Learned

In October last year we ran an experimental raku session in the yard behind the workshop. Raku is a fast process: pieces go into a kiln already at 900 degrees Celsius, come out glowing, and are dropped into a metal bin with combustible material, usually newspaper or dry leaves, where the flames and smoke create the characteristic surface markings. We had done this before, but this time we were testing a new grogged clay body sourced from a supplier near Sassuolo, and the thermal shock cracked eleven of the sixteen pieces we fired.

The clay had a lower grog percentage than the supplier's spec sheet indicated. We confirmed this later by comparing it under a loupe with our usual material. The larger lesson was one we already knew but had underestimated: raku punishes any inconsistency in the clay body, because the temperature differential between inside and outside the piece in that first minute out of the kiln can exceed 400 degrees. The five pieces that survived were genuinely beautiful. We have photographs of them on the gallery page. And we have reordered from our original Tuscany-based supplier.

Teaching Week in July: What to Expect if You Join Us

Every July we open the workshop for five days of hands-on sessions. Last year we had fourteen participants, ranging from a retired schoolteacher from Bologna who had never touched clay before to a professional potter from Lyon who came specifically to study the tin-glaze dipping technique. Both of them left with finished pieces, which surprised the schoolteacher considerably.

The sessions run from nine in the morning until early afternoon. Giorgio leads the wheel-throwing mornings and Marta handles decoration in the afternoons. We fire participant pieces in our electric kiln during the week, so everyone goes home with something tangible. We keep numbers small deliberately because the workshop is not large, and a crowded teaching space produces rushed work and frustration. Fourteen people is already pushing it. We are keeping the 2025 week at twelve maximum.

There is no formal curriculum in the sense of a grade or certificate. What we offer is time in a working studio, access to materials and tools that are part of a living production process, and honest feedback from people who do this for a living. That is the whole offer.

Choosing Between Earthenware and Stoneware: The Practical Difference

We get this question constantly, especially from customers ordering custom tableware. Earthenware fires at lower temperatures, typically between 950 and 1100 degrees Celsius, and remains slightly porous unless the glaze achieves a complete seal. It is lighter, it has a warmer, more rustic feel, and it is the traditional body for our maiolica work. Stoneware fires higher, around 1200 to 1280 degrees, vitrifies almost completely, and is genuinely impervious to water even without glaze. It is heavier and more durable in daily use.

For a family ordering a set of pasta bowls that will go in a dishwasher twice a week, we generally steer toward stoneware. For decorative plates or pieces where the visual character of the tin glaze is the point, earthenware is the right choice. The two materials are not interchangeable, and anyone who tells you otherwise is simplifying things to the point of being unhelpful. We would rather have a fifteen-minute conversation with a customer and get the material right than produce something that chips after six months.