The Ceramic Tiles and Vessels of Vietri - A Centuries Old Building Ingredient and a Visit to Gragnano - The Town of Dried Pasta
Glazed ceramics is waterproof in a way that plain fired clay is not. Prior to the discovery of porcelain, glazing was the preferred way of creating waterproof vessels of clay.
“In the simplest terms, majolica ceramics can be described as earthenware with a tin underglaze. The underglaze acts as an opaque white background for vibrant colors and exuberant designs . Nevertheless, its limited jewel toned palette of cobalt blue, antimony yellow, iron red, copper green and manganese purple is what makes majolica most distinguishable. . .
The technique for making majolica is ancient and was first developed by the Assyrians around the eighth century. The resulting Persian and Egyptian pottery was later imported to Spain, and the Spanish Moors eventually traded these tin-glazed wares to Italy through the island of Majorca.
While the Italians truly made this technique their own, stylizing and popularizing it during the Renaissance, Majolica got its name from the place where it was thought to have originated at the time - Majorca.”
On the Amalfi Coast and particularly in the town of Vietri sul Mare, the manufacture of ceramics and majolica in particular has a long tradition. This production includes everyday objects but also architectural products including tiles used as both flooring, wall cladding, and most dramatically on the domes of the churches on the Sorrento Peninsula.
“Some records of pottery production date as far back as the 14th Century, but the first certain records of the terracotta industry in Vietri are only from the 16th century onward, when mainly kitchen utensils such as plates, bowls, and vases were produced. In the 17th century, however, there was a quality leap in Vietrese Ceramics, which focused also on the creation of objects for religious worship such as majolica tiles with religious subjects, votive shrines or holy water stoops. Finally, in the early 20th century, the growing fame of the industry attracted some of the most famous artists and artisans to the Coast, who helped make Vietri one of the capitals of art pottery.”
We spent the past several days exploring the southern portion of the Bay of Naples and points south based at Gio Ponti’s Parco dei Principi Hotel in Sorrento. This magnificent hotel opened in 1962 and is an essay in the use of ceramics.
Ponti, in addition to being a great architect, furniture designer, interior designer, and journalist—he founded the publication Domus which was the chronicle of Italian design in the Twentieth Century—was a master of ceramics. From early in his career he designed ceramics for the porcelain manufacturer Richard Gingrich. Therefore, it is not an accident that glazed ceramics are the principal decorative architectural material in the hotel.
There are three principal ceramic elements in the hotel. The exterior cladding of the first floor in white, and interior in blue that look like ceramic golf ball sized rocks. These textured elements were designed and manufactured by Ceramics Joo.
The interior columns on the first floor are composed of wall tiles by the artist Fausto Melotti. These are characterized by their subtle glazes. Ponti collaborated with Fausto Melotti on various projects including the Alitalia Ticket Office in New York.
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The defining ceramic tiles of the Parco dei Principi were designed by Ponti himself. He set as his goal to create a unique tile pattern for each of the hotels almost 100 rooms. This was achieved using the principles of Vietri tile design working with Fornaci d’Agostino just outside of Vietri. Ponti designed 20 patterns and then used them in multiple orientations of the same pattern which thus created distinct larger patterns.
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This concept became immediately clear the moment we entered our room. “Our” pattern was a circle that is divided in half with one half white surrounded by dark blue and the other half of the dark blue circle surrounded by white. Our pattern was composed of four tiles with two white halves tangent and then above (or below) the tiles were rotated so two blue halves are tangent. Because the outside of the dark blue halves is the light blue glaze the effect that is created is that of a blue square and—because the only white in the composition is the two white circles—these define a white square. The additional half modules to each side then continue the pattern. In this way there is the reading of the single tile and the reading of the four tiles.
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I purchased Gio Ponti e la committenza Fernandes by Fabrizio Mautone at the hotel about the history of the design of all the hotels Ponti designed for Roberto Fernandes, including ones in Naples and Rome as well as the one in Sorrento. Unfortunately, the Rome Hotel no longer exists, and the hotel in Naples has been significantly altered. Ponti was only responsible for the interiors and roof top pool in Naples. This leaves the Parco dei Principi in Sorrento as the expression of Ponti’s hotel design. Many of his other commercial interiors sadly also no longer exist—the interiors of Ocean Liners, the Ticket Office for Alitalia, etc.
The hotel has embraced its heritage and there are several displays regarding the design of the hotel and its interiors on the ground floor. The importance of its design is celebrated right at the front door with placards commemorating its 60th anniversary last year.
After several days living in this magical environment, I told Marian that I needed to understand the tile making process. I had looked up Fornaci D’Agostino that had made the tiles for Ponti and they seemed to still exist. A phone call verified this and a gentleman by the name of Angelo said that he would be happy to meet us—so we took off for what the address said was Salerno. Sorrento is about two thirds out on the peninsula that bears its name and so one has to drive east to then catch the Autostrada south to get to Salerno. It is a beautiful, if time consuming, drive and we needed to get there before lunch when the operation shut down. We arrived at this beautiful old factory building, but were not sure how to get in. A call to Angelo made it clear that while we were in the right place, we were in the wrong place—this building was now their warehouse. I could at least imagine that this is where Ponti had come.
We drove to the company’s new headquarters. It is now in fact a line of three old companies and the Ponti tile is produced under the name, Francesco de Maio. Angelo showed us the glazing process with the white under glazing and the hand painted majolica pattern on top. The pattern is outlined in various ways and then hand painted. It was Angelo who made clear to me that Ponti’s conception of the four tile pattern as the basis of his designs is in fact the basis of Vietri’s traditional tile patterns. These patterns are only “complete” as groups of four and yet they allow for the next layer and so on. Ponti made single tiles that harness the power of the groups of four to create the diversity he was looking for.
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After we bid Angelo goodbye, we headed down the hill into Vietri sul Mare to go see the Ceramica Artistica Solimene. Marian’s family had many of their plates and she was anxious to go to the source.
The landscape of the Sorrento Peninsula is one of steep cliffs, and one has to navigate going up and down them on roads with sharp hairpin turns. I was not prepared for the drama of the Solimene building. It is as if the cliff has become ceramic. Outside of the building is a sculptural element from which hang a series of wind bells designed by Paolo Soleri. Soleri is one of those figures that every architecture student knows of—the rebel genius Italian architect who studied at Taliesin West with Frank Lloyd Wright and then went on to begin building his own vision in the desert: Arcosanti. One of the differences between Soleri and Wright was that he saw his creation in “urban terms”—he spoke in terms of “Arcology,” architecture that was aligned with ecology.
What I had missed was the story of his return to Italy in 1950 after his time with Wright and the commission to build the Ceramica Artistica Solimene. This building is a revelation. One of Vincenzo Solimene’s children explains how the project came to be built:
“‘Soleri did a pencil drawing and, with a piece of clay, showed him (her father) how the columns would be; then he did a watercolor,’ she says. The terrain on which the factory would be built was sheer rock, with a row of Maritime pines above - indeed the undulating form of the facade was inspired by the trees shapes. ‘My father liked it a lot. But it was very difficult to get the project approved and the site was blocked several times. The locals saw it as futuristic - even shocking’” (P 230 - The Food and Wine Guide to Naples and Campania by Carla Capalbo).
The facade of the factory is built with more than 20,000 hand thrown pots. Soleri clearly took the lessons from Vietri to heart as he used them to produce ceramic and bronze wind bells. The sale of these helped finance the creation of Arcosanti.
Seeing this amazing creation in Vietri, I could not help thinking of the other Wright inspired architect: Bruce Goff and his American School students including John Marsh Davis, whose work I discuss in a monograph published last year.
On this trip we also visited Gragnano, which is famous for its dry pasta. Gragnano is located at the point that the Sorrento peninsula begins. I was struck by how much the various pasta shapes are like the various clay tiles and ceramic pots—made of the same ingredients but profoundly impacting the “taste” of the dish they are a part of. Sauce adheres to each shape in a unique way.
Carla Capalbo provides the following history of pasta which I quote in its entirety here. We visited the Pastai Gragnanese and drove down the Main Street described here:
PASTA: THE WHYS AND WHEREFORES
Antonio Marchetti is a pastaholic - he eats pasta with olive oil and lemon juice for breakfast - and runs Gragnano's principal pasta-making co-operative, Pastai Gragnanese. He is an expert on pasta history and on Gragnano - and he helped me compile this brief guide to pasta.
The Origins
There is an ongoing debate about where pasta originated, but it may be more constructive to note that throughout history, civilizations in every part of the globe had some sort of pasta, made of maize, rice, wheat or other farinaceous ingredients. The reason is simple: it's easier and safer to store pasta than it is to keep raw grain, which is vulnerable to temperature, humidity, infection and pests. So every culture found some way to grind and preserve flour by mixing it with water and drying it. In Italy, there are depictions of pasta by the Etruscans as early as 450 BC: at Tarquinia there is an image of a plate of pici (a type of hand-made pasta still found in Tuscany), while on a tomb at Cerveteri are portrayed the pasta-maker's tools, rolling pin included.
By 1300 pasta was being produced artisanally by hand, but the industrial breakthrough came in the 16th century with the invention of the press, or torchio. This allowed pasta to be formed by being extruded through metal dies, so large volumes of consistently perfect pasta could be made with much less effort, ready to be dried and shipped all over the world. In 1861, 67 pasta companies (fabbriche di maccheroni) were operating at Gragnano, and 22 mills: in 1950, 43 pastifici and 12 mills; today 11 pastifici exist (both artisanal and industrial) and no mills. Today, 300 different shapes of pasta are still being produced at Gragnano.What's in it?
The ingredients of Gragnano's pasta are grano duro (durum wheat), water - and air. These three elements are indispensable for the successful making of pasta, and at Gragnano they co-existed naturally.Grain
Millennia ago, Vesuvio was probably encircled by the sea, for all around it now is a flat plain, a wide ‘valley' of fertile tufo, or compacted volcanic ash. During the Roman era (and undoubtedly before), this large area was planted with the wheat that supplied Roma and Napoli with grain. Indeed, in Roman times Gragnano was called Pradium Granium, i.e. a large piece of land cultivated to cereals. If, between Gragnano and Vesuvio, the land is mainly tufo, in the other direction, towards the Amalfi Coast, the ground is white limestone, part of the mountain range that makes the Monti Lattari.Water
Gragnano's water comes from the Monti Lattari chain of mountains which form the backbone of the Sorrento Peninsula, then drop off into the sea to re-emerge in their furthest point - Capri. The river valley below Gragnano is known locally as la Valle dei Mulini for the many water-powered flour mills that were built along it, often with origins in the Middle Ages. They began to die out at the end of the 19th century when taxes were introduced on each turn of the mill-stone (as ever, in industry's favour). Until fifty years ago, some were still being used, but today these beautiful stone buildings are unfortunately all in crumbling ruins.Air
It seems that Gragnano began as a pasta centre in the 17th century. Its main street, Via Roma, was designed in 1820 for drying pasta. It was purpose-built along the sun's axis so that the racks of pasta the factories put out to dry in the street could receive the sun from morning to evening. It took two to three days to dry the pasta. There was a continual current of air to help this drying process, formed in the channel between the mountain and the sea, and the wind picked up speed at Gragnano, which is why its microclimate is unique.With the advent of industrialization, drying ovens were designed to speed up the process and make it more hygienic. Slow-drying the pasta at low temperatures maintains the grain's flavours and nutritional benefits: Gragnano artisan pasta is dried for 32 hours at 50°C; modern industrial pasta is dried in two to three hours in temperatures from 79° to 100°C.
It is interesting that towns such as Vietri and Gragnano develop such strong specializations that come to define them; it makes sense that expertise builds upon expertise. When we were in Vietri sul Mare, we had lunch at a wonderful little restaurant, Sesta Stazione, that we found through the Slow Food App. They are part of the Slow Food effort to preserve La Colatura di Alici, a fish sauce that is made from anchovies through a process that is believed to be like that which produced ancient “garum.” It is this sauce which was one of the major exports of Pompeii. The center of the production of La Colatura di Alici is in fact the town just to the West of Vietri sul Mare: Cetara. It seems that each town in Italy has its product that it perfects.
Great article Hans!
Everything you write about appeals to me. I had no idea that Soleri built this factory, in his odd idiosyncratic way. Your knowledge of obscure wonderful things and places shines through.
Hans, this post sings to me, a potter and tile maker, and lover of all things Italian. In my journeys to Italy, I have come to appreciate each town’s, each region’s fierce loyalty to the intensely, particularly local. My Italian friends know that their own regional ways of doing things is the best way. In the US, artists are encouraged to pursue individuality over all else, and the dissipation of history and local culture is the unfortunate result.