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The Castle of Deruta in the 1940s, during the growth of the second
Renaissance of the most famous ceramics towns in Italy.
Photo by: Roberta Niccacci, ceramics plaque on the way to
Castel-Leone is part of the aedicule dedicated to the Sacred Family.
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MY DREAM OF BUSINESS AS A FRIENDS AND FAMILY EXPERIENCE OF THE CASTLE OF DERUTA AS A SACRED FAMILY (January 2009-September 2012)
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| I like to "attaccare bottone", give start to conversations and see where they can take me...some people in Deruta may have guessed it was just chatting... on the contrary, it was one of my tools to prove them! Ah-ah-ah. |
♥ I guess in Deruta artisans and entrepreneurs are still guessing what I wanted to do with them...nothing special except getting together with peace of mind, based on their opening their doors to me with all their heart. A the end I could do nothing except chat with them or bring them some business, a few crumbs compared to what my dream was, their doors not being open to innovation; the best they can do is change the patterns of their traditional drawings, by calling famous artists to their workshops if they can still afford it, or think of selling as much as possible by taking the advantage of someone bringing customers up to their doors, thinking of doing you a favor, by keeping going without caring about the destiny of other fellow citizens who unfortunately for them practice the same art of ceramics, therefore they are "competitors".
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| I do not like to play games in the business, I like to be informal and I do not believe in business plans. I want to see what the persons in front of me are capable of, especially in the way of taking advantage of what is being offered to them. Without rules, human beings only think about themselves and pay back gold with iron, the irony of fate. |
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| I do not have Adele's beautiful & professional voice, but I have a voice in the Deruta's Skyfall. |
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| Of all the feedbacks in Deruta, I fell in love with a couple of people only, a Derutese young lady open to innovation (but who knows what her parents' opinion was) and an artist coming from abroad who lives and works in Deruta. He is the one who talked to me about the need for Deruta to go through a healing process. Shortly afterward I gave up thinking I would become a Saint since I am not at the level of Saint Francis, who died in his bed, I would have died as a martyr for sure. No, thank you! SAINT ROBIN OF DERUTA can wait... |
After my negative experience in Deruta, I firmly believe that the rules of cruel competition, which come from the Industrial Revolution, cannot apply to the Italian way of doing business, especially when it is a matter of Arts & Crafts, therefore involving values such as passion and love: cruelty in the seek of the lowest price possible and the strolling from one place to the other enhancing unfair competition and copying is one of the reasons for the "Sky-Fall" of Deruta. (by the way, I highly recommend the latest 007 Movie that has opened in Italy on October 31st. Javier Bardem is just great, Daniel Craig wonderful and Judie Dench sweet and beautiful, I want to be like her in my adulthood, brunette version). The consequences of cruel competition and business rules which do not belong to our Italian heritage have created a loss of authenticity and when charm and appeal happened, this was restricted to your own workshop, such as the factory where I grew up in Deruta like in a beautiful prison where I was subdued to the same dynamics of the rest of the community. This is one point. The second point is something that has happened since the late 1960s when in Deruta there were a few factories only (the ones that had resumed the art of ceramics at the end of the 1800s and a few of them that had joined in the timespan from the 1920s to the1950s) which did research, with a structure, departments heads, scholars, each factory with its unique style and many workers going from 80 to 150 employees. At a certain point upon invitation of the unions and the arts and crafts associations lead by people of Deruta (affected by the auto-immune disease, about which I am going to write later) little by little each former worker of the original factories has opened his own workshop which has brought Deruta from something like five factories of the 1950s to 350 micro workshops of the 1980s. The starting action of opening small workshops and studios was the start of the scattering and the separation which has brought to zero evolution of the products, by encouraging unfair competition and loss of research and development, the start of the decadence despite the success which has accompanied Deruta until the late 1990s. The latest negative scattering of the art was the opening of workshops producing raw materials and bisque ware, unfinished products which have been sold everywhere in Italy and overseas without the awareness that there are shapes that belong to Deruta only beside the fact that the quality of the bisque ware was lower and lower, with no comparison with the quality of the products inside the workshops where products are subject to control for the whole process and they belong to each specific workshop as a distinctive and specific part of the personality of the workshop. The third point is the fact that inside the workshops themselves artists are not willing to cooperate to become part of their beloved workshops in times of recessions, they cannot believe that love and unity can be revolutionary, they will never be aware that they were treated with love if the only thing they can care about is their money at the end of the month (and good money for many decades) for which they do not want to run any risks, when they speak about loving their workshop it is all fake, they firmly believe that working for you is a lot they are giving already.
Forth point (four is the number of death in Japan and in Italy we only care about uneven numbers, as a matter of fact, flower bouquets only carry uneven numbers of roses) is that when you are in difficulties and your workshop was all your life, you think that someone who has benefited from your love, passion, and caring in a mutual exchange of satisfaction and success will be available to do anything to help you, on the contrary, it happens the same way it may happen with a broken marriage, your best retailer whom you have served for thirty years just goes next door and shops from your father's worst unfair competitor who has given your father the worst time in the world for the past forty years: all this in the name of freedom of choice?
So after all I agree with my mentor who says that I must let them all go in Deruta and start a new white page without regret, without complaint, in Deruta it will happen just like in Como, where in order not to give up on their power and without seeing further than their nose, they lost their art and the Chinese took over.
In conclusion, I would like to add for those who are strictly pragmatic, that selling art products and genuine Italian products is not only a matter of "where, why and how" buy them, there is much more to it, there are people, feelings, and stories behind each piece made which make them valuable, this is the reason why I wanted to talk about the experience that has happened to me in Deruta. If I only could make good usage of the creative destructions which are in action right now in Deruta!
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| The Nickname for Roberta is "Robin" or simply short for Roberta. This bird would have been part of the coat of arms they would have created to commemorate my death, as a Renaissance Ambassador of Deruta I would have deserved a personal coat of arms namely "Impresum". Ciao!!! Goodbye!!! |
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Original Post by Roberta Niccacci -
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