Maiolica di Castelli Maestro ceramista Giovanni Simonetti ''Grande Misura'' - Vase - Ceramic

Five centuries of Castelli’s ceramic art tradition are reflected in the artisanal workshop SIMONETTI, founded and directed by master ceramist Giovanni Simonetti, who in 1967 took over an old workshop and began his activity using traditional methods such as the foot-powered wheel and the “breath-fired” kiln.

The ceramic art of Castelli, in Abruzzo, has ancient origins, but became famous in the sixteenth century.

It was the high quality of the maiolicas, the lively decorations, but also the affordability of the products, thanks to innovative production systems, that made Castelli one of the most appreciated centers for this art, especially in the seventeenth century.

Although Castelli is a small town in the province of Teramo, its role in the history of Italian maiolica is of primary importance, particularly in the period from the XVI to the XVIII century.

Ciro the Younger meets Lisandro, work by Francesco Grue, Acerbo Collection of the Civic Museums of Loreto Aprutino

The sixteenth-century church of San Donato in Castelli constitutes, together with the contemporaneous pharmaceutic ware named Orsini-Colonna, the ideal starting point for a later production that enjoyed immense fame in Italy and abroad; so much so that one of the most important collections of Castelli ceramics is today kept at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.

The Grue family was the one that stood out the most among the workshops, becoming master and model to follow, with Carlo Antonio Grue as its most notable representative, together with his son Aurelio Anselmo. In the decorations, initially only five colors were used, with all the various shades, with the red absent, which was introduced at the end of the eighteenth century by Gesualdo Fuina of Loreto Aprutino.

The museum was established in Castelli in 1984 to promote the culture and art of maiolica, and to safeguard local history and traditions. The museum building is housed in the ancient convent of the Observant Minor Friars of the XVI century; the convent housed the friars until 1866, after suppression it became a store, and in 1905 it housed the first headquarters of the State Institute of Art “Francesco Antonio Grue,” eventually becoming a museum. Divided into two floors, on the ground floor one can observe the Renaissance cloister surrounded by a cycle of frescoes from 1712, baroque-inspired, with 21 lunettes depicting episodes from the life of Mary, mother of Jesus; each lunette is interspersed with medallions depicting the faces of saints and blesseds who dedicated their lives to religious work. The route runs through rooms where an ideal workshop of the XVI-XVII centuries has been reconstructed to convey the manual work involved in creating each single piece by the Grue and Gentili families; it is possible to see old vats for decanting clay, crushing and making the malleable clay, then the various forming techniques, glazing and decoration of the object, and finally the reproduction of the ancient kiln for firing the artifact, called the “forno a respiro.”

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