January 23, 2022

The ceramics of Albisola

sisisoftware

Lavoratti entrusted Tullio Mazzotti, the great-grandson of that Tullio of Albisola, the inventor of Futurist ceramics and an essential artist in the history of 20th-century art, with the production of some limited series of ceramic packaging for their products.

Ceramics are the oldest material shaped by human hands. It holds something magical and even religious within itself. According to the Old Testament, Adam and Eve were given life from the earth, not by chance. Ceramics involve manual work to shape it; it is fragile and requires extreme care to be perfected. Each piece is the result of inventiveness, skill, and talent, and the ceramics of Albisola have always been a guarantee of quality and surprising originality.

For the ancient Greeks, art and technique were the same thing. Art essentially meant knowing how to do something well. This is why, in the art of ceramics, the roles of the artist and the craftsman have always been complementary.

The collaboration between Lavoratti and Tullio of Albisola aims to revive an important tradition typical of our region, enhance artisanal work, and at the same time make our product offerings unique.

The artistic journey of Albisola has distant roots: it is the raw material that leads the way. The clay from the stream that runs through the small seaside village started the production of tableware for the many kilns in the area. Once out of the oven, the pieces were left to dry on the beaches before being loaded onto boats and sailing ships that carried them across the gulf on which Albisola overlooks.

The refined ceramics of Savona, with its characteristic white and blue, the black earthenware of the nineteenth century typical of this area, and the kilns of Albisola, have made these places an essential global reference point for the art of ceramics for over five hundred years. In 1903, Giuseppe Mazzotti marked a turning point in Albisola with the founding of his namesake manufactory. It was the beginning of an exciting journey: from Art Deco to Futurism. The Mazzotti company, with the genius of Tullio Mazzotti—renamed Tullio d’Albisola by F.T. Marinetti—became the undisputed center of Futurist ceramics.

The poet Farfa, Marinetti, Fillia, Tullio d’Albisola, along with Diulgheroff and Munari, invented new forms and intellectual provocations, writing free words on tin books in an unprecedented burst of creativity. And it doesn’t stop there. In the 1950s, Albisola hosted the ‘International Ceramic’ event and began new collaborations with world-renowned artists, from Asger Jorn to Lucio Fontana, from Aligi Sassu to Wilfredo Lam, who worked in Albisola for extended periods, leaving visible marks and effectively transforming the town into an incredible open-air museum.