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The exhibition, which will remain open until May 2025, offers a valuable overview of the first fifty years of the Italian Ceramic District from 1889-1939, chronicling courageous and visionary entrepreneurship that anticipated the postwar economic boom. The exhibition is on display at the Fiorano Modenese Ceramics Museum in Spezzano Castle, with free admission.
The over one hundred pieces on display narrate the history of the period from 1889, considered the start of industrial tile production in Sassuolo, to just before the outbreak of the Second World War.
The initiative, made possible by the invaluable input of Marazzi Group for historic research and Ceramiche Marca Corona for publication of the Catalogue, was organised in partnership with the Municipality of Fiorano Modenese, the Ceramics Museum, Confindustria Ceramica, Acimac and Società Ceramica Italiana.
The scientific curatorship involved synergistic work by some of the leading experts in the field –Margherita Fraccon, Francesco Genitoni, Rolando Giovannini, Guglielmo Leoni, Matteo Ruini, and Vincenzo Vandelli – with the coordination of Stefania Spaggiari, director of the Ceramics Museum.
The exhibition is worth visiting not only for its unique exhibits but also to learn how the economic boom can be traced back to as early as the 1930s in the ceramic district.
The ceramic manufacturers active in the area – Ceramiche Ing. Rizzi&figli, Ninzoli Marconi Lusenti, Ceramica Marca Corona, Ceramica Veggia, Ceramica SAIME, Ceramica SACES and Ceramica Marazzi – promoted a profound change in the social fabric of the province of Modena, which saw a rapid and strategic shift from an agricultural to an industrial focus thanks in part to the courage and visionary spirit of many entrepreneurs.
“This was the case of Filippo Marazzi Sr,” says Francesco Genitoni, a scholar and historian of the ceramics industry and author of numerous essays, “who, after abandoning the grocer’s business he ran for several decades in Sassuolo’s Piazza Garibaldi, entered the industry at the age of sixty. Between 1935-1936 he began tile production, after acquiring the most modern equipment, not limited to firing kilns.” He continues: “The focus on improving plants and everything on the production line was common to most of the entrepreneurs, their technicians and even the workers themselves. The protectionist and tax benefits that the Duke of Modena had granted to Sassuolo majolica in 1741 no longer existed, so competition was now developing nationally and abroad. Some companies moved their headquarters to Milan, which was already the capital of the Italian economy and finance, in order to be close to the stock exchange and investors.”
Stefania Spaggiari, director of the Ceramics Museum in Fiorano Modenese, affirms that, “This shift led to a solid relationship with capital and an association with cultural and artistic movements, not only from Italy but from beyond the Alps, which also anticipated the fashions we witnessed in the postwar period and heralded the experimentation that led ceramic companies to collaborate with artists and designers. This marked the start of a profound change in taste that abandoned late 19th-century decorativism and opened up to that distinctively Italian expertise in craftsmanship and art that even infused mass-produced products with quality and beauty.”
“The historic homes that featured the earliest examples of the use of ceramics on large surfaces confirm the decorativist tendency of that period,” recalls Stefania Spaggiari. “And they also show us that installation of this covering material almost never had a purely functional role but was always accompanied by aesthetic research, which in the exhibition reveals unprecedented and surprising forms.”
The exhibition reveals, for the first time, the Medici Collection, a treasure trove of more than seven thousand artifacts tracing the evolution of ceramic production in the Modena and Reggio Emilia area, donated to the Municipality of Fiorano Modenese by the heirs of Antonio Medici, a passionate collector who passed away in 2021. “A collection,” Francesco Genitoni tells us, “that we will continue to study and that confirms how the three aspects – raw materials, innovative production processes and design – have always been the pillars of the ceramic district’s research. There are many sizes and decors that reflect a unique creative and experimental ferment. With reference to Marazzi, we cannot fail to mention the series of tiles with coloured silhouettes and the marking of individual pieces with the company’s logo, as well as the templates for hand-painting signs, plaques and road signs.”
The fifty years chronicled in the exhibition constitute a fundamental phase in the history of the ceramic district, and of Italian industry as a whole, anticipating all the topics of the postwar period. A tribute to the area’s avant-garde spirit and its entrepreneurship.
For visits and bookings write to castellospezzano@gmail.com