Studio Artistico, Italian art and craft

STUDIO ARTISTICO, ITALIAN ART & CRAFT

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CUSTOM ARTWORKS AND FINE CRAFTMANSHIP FROM ITALY BY STUDIO ARTISTICO ARTISTS AND CRAFTSMEN.

ARTWORKS AND CUSTOM DECORATIVE WORKS OF ANY KIND:

Drawings and paintings, portraits of people and pets, your favorite view, your house, illustrations, kids decorations or decorations of any type, murals and anything else you can think of!

LARGE SELECTION OF FINE ITALIAN HAND MADE CERAMICS:

Della Robbia ceramics of any kind and subjects: Plaques, holy water fonts, Madonna and child, holy family and nativity, adoration, angels, babies and various saints...

Beautiful unique terra cotta and majolica items for the home and garden. Plaques, vases and decorative accessories.

On special request we offer also custom designs and decorations.

We work closely with a few different artists from Florence (Italy) specialized in each field.

FEEL FREE TO CONTACT US FOR ANY INFORMATION

MAKING A TERRA COTTA FRAME

USING A MOLD TO MAKE THE BASE OF THE FRAME WITH CLAY

ADDING FREE HAND MADE FRUIT DECORATIONS

THE FRAME AFTER BEING BAKED IN THE KILN (THE COLOR OF THE CLAY HAS CHANGED WITH FIRING)

THE FRAME HAS BEEN HAND DECORATED WITH SPECIAL PAINT AND IS ENCLOSING ONE OF OUR CUSTOM MADE PORTRAIT

Links

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Custom portraits from photo: ...Not just a copy from a photo itself....

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I'd like to make a brief (as brief as it's possible) picture of the concept and development of the representation of nature by artists in the history of art; so that an approach by the viewer to the matter of portrayal from photo, would be more complete and comprehensible.

The birth of photography goes back approximately 1839. This event had a crucial effect in the artistic field. We can in fact combine the birth of "Modern Art" with the diffusion of photography. And from here "Impressionism" and all the other trends that, to the ancient conception of art as mimesis (as imitation of things) replaces art as creation (art as expression, as free interpretation of the artist). With the birth of photography by representation, painting was freed of the task of objective reproduction of images. Until this moment in fact, the artist was always bound to the need and desire to reproduce nature in its objectivity: The search of volumes, the study of optical laws, the invention of the prospective...

However, from that moment onwards it was no more necessary for painting to fulfill that function which photography could carry out better and at minor cost. The task of the artist therefore was no longer to make a copy as near as possible to reality. The value was now in the feeling that the subject expressed.
But photography did not "kill" painting. In reality their path was interlaced and the first photographers were also painters (Daguerre and Talbot) and photography became considered by many painters like a valid aid in order to study and fix the appearance of the reality. Photography and painting are therefore different but parallel expressions of the empiricist vision of the material world.
Photography frees painting of the exactitude of representation and the latter regains thanks to this, the freedom of action ("to paint not the things, but the effect that it produces "). All this forced the artists to explore field inaccessible to photography and without such solicitation "Modern Art " would not have become what it is today.....

Styles and techniques

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The term Ceramic is derived from the greek word Keramos, which is precisely the name of clay.
This can have different characteristics depending on the type of mixture, baking process, and coloring. The types most known are, terra cotta (earthenware), pottery, porcelain, and majolica (when terra cotta is applied a covering).
There are few ways to work with clay and making ceramics: The POTTER'S WHEEL is usually used to make vases, pots, pitchers, or cylindrical pieces in general. Using MOLDS with two different techniques, called: A COLO (à colo) or A CALCO (à calco), or free style (without molds).
There is also different types of clay and that can be "red" or "white". Red is more rustic and heavy, white is more "polished". Our ceramics are all made with clay from Montelupo (Florence) which is the most valuable Our clay is "Galestro clay" for the items in terra cotta (the ones named with E). Galestro is a very thick, dense and viscous clay. Its chemical composition in fact makes it very hard and long lasting and so also pretty heavy. In fact Galestro clay is usually used to make items in terra cotta that are mostly kept outside - items that needs to be stronger - vases, sculptures etc... The richness of mineral salts, after being baked, makes its unique typical color of a red-pinkish tone, never homogeneous. But it can also be enameled to make ceramics goods of any kind and Della Robbia ceramics. These however will have a more rustic look.

The ceramics in this website, named with "M" and "S" are in white clay.
The one named with "M" are made a calco, the ones named with S are made a colo. In both of the processes a mold is used to make the finish ceramic, but the clay used has different characteristics itself and this determines the differences in the procedure of make the ceramic. The a calco process requires a different clay then the one used in the a colo process and it also requires more time in molding the items. The clay used in the a calco technique is in fact more dense and as a final result the piece will be more heavy but perhaps less sharp (still polished). The clay used in the a colo process is more aqueous and mellow, so it spreads itself into all the volumes of the mold more easily, reaching the details of the mold more precisely. This perhaps gets as final result a more sharp look but, also, the finished product will be of course lighter since the chemical composition of the clay was in fact more saturated respect to the clay used in the a calco process.

What is terra cotta?

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Terra cotta is a hard semi fired waterproof ceramic clay used in pottery and building construction. The name is Italian for "baked earth". Our terra cotta pieces are hand made with the well know clay from Montelupo (Florence, Italy). The characteristics of this fine and excellent clay are very unique: its chemical composition in fact makes it very hard and long lasting. Also the richness of mineral salts, after being baked, makes its unique typical color of a red-pinkish tone, never homogeneous. It is called Galestro clay. The look of terra cotta becomes more beautiful with time, getting a layer of salts and other agents and also from the dust in general. That is why durability for an object made of terra cotta is important and the excellent quality of the Galestro clay guarantees it. In Italy, some people actually, accelerate the aging process of the object made of terracotta by keeping the surfaces of the pottery always humid. An object made with a good quality clay will last for years... even centuries!!

What are Della Robbia ceramics? The workshop: from Luca Della Robbia to Andrea Della Robbia, and then Giovanni

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DELLA ROBBIA is today a style in which ceramics refer to the original masterpieces of the Della Robbia brothers.
Luca Della Robbia (Florence, Italy 1400-1492) was in fact the artist whose great merit is of being the first to bring about the birth of a whole new style in the history of sculpture, the enameled majolica (or glazed terra cotta). He applied to the art of terra cotta sculpture, a special purpose-made, tin-based glaze, a process know in italian as invetriatura, that soon turned out to be providential for the preservation of delicate and fragile works molded out of "earth".

The technique of glazing was actually very antique - earlier than the Roman world - but he was the one who placed it at the service of monumental plastic art that instead needed a very thin kind of glaze, hard to make (before glazing was only used for earthenware and other objects for domestic use). Galzing was born as a necessity for the best protection of the fragile material, but now the possibility to color with a shiny enamel added, to the plastic quality of sculpture, the chromatic ones of painting. The renowned reputation of the ceramics of Luca della Robbia was for the quality of the enamel he used. In fact, their incredible level of brilliance, lucidity, and thickness was not equivalent for that time; above all, if one considers the fact that enamel was not destined to the smooth surfaces of vases and kitchenware, but it had to cover uniformly relieved terra cotta. Therefore it had to be considerably more dense and opaque for not to have the terra cotta show through. At the maximum temperature of baking, the enamel passes to the liquid state, with a tendency to slide along the walls of the terra cotta, leaving the borders uncovered. This was one of the most difficult problems to resolve for the ceramists of that time. The enamel of Luca della Robbia was more white, dense, and covering in respect to the other workshops. This new use of ceramics was derived from the request of the buyers that began to prefer the glazed ceramic for its lucidity, suited for churches immersed in darkness and for its weight, which made it possible to place the works on non robustal bases; and also for its economic price and rapid mass production. It was the first reproducible sculpture. The glazed works of Luca, in consonance with the esthetic preferences of that age are in the classic Della Robbian two-color scheme: white figures on blue backgrounds. Later he began to add more variegated colors schemes such as green, yellow and red, that however were only used in decorative trimmings, in particular for the garlands of plants, in which green leaves were intertwined with rosettes, lilies, quinces, oranges and cucumbers, enriching the deliberately limited palette of the central composition. The heritage of his workshop was passed onto his nephew, Andrea della Robbia, and then on to Giovanni, one of Andrea's five sons.

TODAY the Della Robbia ceramics are reproductions of those masterpieces kept now in museums all over the world and on walls of ancient churches and buildings. Now workshops have few different ways of making the Della Robbia ceramics.
The most common are "a colo" and "a calco". This with the quality of the clay used determines the fineness of the final piece.
The chemical composition of clay is in fact very important and it differs depending on where it is from. The finest and the most renown is the clay from Montelupo, Impruneta and all around the Florentine province. Then the glazing is very important.
The colors of the ceramic shows the quality in the enamel used, the thickness and the chemical composition.

Today Della Robbia is also often negligently used just as a term to indicate a pattern or anything that referrers to the typical fruit garland that surrounds the original majolica pieces of the masters.