Sorelle Ariu
The laboratory was set up in 2001 with the creation of AriuCeramiche, the small craft shop in the historic centre of Cagliari. For over twenty years they have been making ceramic products. With the unmistakable passion and the desire to look for new stimuli, they began to study an object – the sheep – a symbol of tradition and innovation.
This is how the sheep with the current features and dimensions (from h7.5cm up to h50cm) was created, made entirely by hand in pyrex clay, decorated by engraving on overlapping engobes, and with the characteristic curl that symbolises the laboratory. Through a careful and continuous design, they still try to develop the initial designs trying to go beyond the boundaries of the ordinary.
The proportions change, but not the workmanship, nor the decorative techniques.
In 2012, Bixinau was created as the workshop’s latest project, a three-dimensional story to homage all women: aunts, grandmothers and young girls who bring life to the streets and alleys of the town, with their smiles, their movements, their presence.
A tribute to life that finds form in the fireclay, which is worked, once again, entirely by hand, without the use of colour, strictly in black and white, to allow only for the essence of the gesture.
Bixinau could be translated with the term “neighbourhood” but this does not convey the concept of extended family that ‘Is Bixiasa’ (the women) represented. The housewives, awake from morning to dawn, met at different times of the day, as if in their living room, to exchange opinions, recipes, to gossip about their husbands or about the neighbour girl, who had the misfortune of being absent at the moment.
“Each of our women represents a different sound of Su Bixinau”
Sorelle Ariu
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Sorelle Ariu
Sorelle Ariu
The laboratory was set up in 2001 with the creation of AriuCeramiche, the small craft shop in the historic centre of Cagliari. For over twenty years they have been making ceramic products. With the unmistakable passion and the desire to look for new stimuli, they began to study an object – the sheep – a symbol of tradition and innovation.
This is how the sheep with the current features and dimensions (from h7.5cm up to h50cm) was created, made entirely by hand in pyrex clay, decorated by engraving on overlapping engobes, and with the characteristic curl that symbolises the laboratory. Through a careful and continuous design, they still try to develop the initial designs trying to go beyond the boundaries of the ordinary.
The proportions change, but not the workmanship, nor the decorative techniques.
In 2012, Bixinau was created as the workshop’s latest project, a three-dimensional story to homage all women: aunts, grandmothers and young girls who bring life to the streets and alleys of the town, with their smiles, their movements, their presence.
A tribute to life that finds form in the fireclay, which is worked, once again, entirely by hand, without the use of colour, strictly in black and white, to allow only for the essence of the gesture.
Bixinau could be translated with the term “neighbourhood” but this does not convey the concept of extended family that ‘Is Bixiasa’ (the women) represented. The housewives, awake from morning to dawn, met at different times of the day, as if in their living room, to exchange opinions, recipes, to gossip about their husbands or about the neighbour girl, who had the misfortune of being absent at the moment.
“Each of our women represents a different sound of Su Bixinau”
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Fabio Frau
As an artist of Sardinian ceramics, each of his crafted pieces provide a profound and never predictable reflection between object and space that host them, so the materials and colors of his birthplace burst into each of his creations. The craftsmanship is a medium between the object and its staging as a product of art.
Methods and Techniques
Craftsmanship is just a complex of knowledge that assists the craftsperson in making objects. There are forms that develop in certain places, with specific characteristics and their own symbology, while talking about tradition and typical ceramics could be a limitation to Fabio Frau’s expressiveness.
Specialized in modeling, he makes molds and molding by casting. It uses the pottery wheel and has an electric oven that reaches one thousand hundred degrees with a capacity of 60X75X60 centimeters.
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Elvio Usai
A “wretched” job made of sacrifice and tenacity. So Elvio Usai, ceramist from Assemini,talks about his work, having spent a lifetime between fresh clay and terra cotta. In sixty-nine years of experience on the pottery wheel, he has seen the material change shape and with it its function: from the jugs for water supply to the annular amphora, a ceramic jewel that his son Walter produces with skill thanks to the education passed down by his father.
Methods and Techniques
From the red clay worked and transformed by father Elvio, to the white clay, vitrified earthenware and raku used by his son Walter for polychrome ceramics, lead-free brilliant enamels and graffiti decorations. The temperatures and the number of baked items (one for the red, two for the white) vary according to the material, respectful of classic iconography and within an appearance of contemporaneity.
The electric and gas ovens that mark the pace of a real revolution in ceramic processing reach respectively 1,100 and 1,300 degrees with a capacity of up to 60 cm in one piece and 1 m over two pieces. In the laboratory located in Assemini, the glazing is performed inside a spray booth for the recovery of the powders.
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Elvio Usai
Elvio Usai
A “wretched” job made of sacrifice and tenacity. So Elvio Usai, ceramist from Assemini,talks about his work, having spent a lifetime between fresh clay and terra cotta. In sixty-nine years of experience on the pottery wheel, he has seen the material change shape and with it its function: from the jugs for water supply to the annular amphora, a ceramic jewel that his son Walter produces with skill thanks to the education passed down by his father.
Methods and Techniques
From the red clay worked and transformed by father Elvio, to the white clay, vitrified earthenware and raku used by his son Walter for polychrome ceramics, lead-free brilliant enamels and graffiti decorations. The temperatures and the number of baked items (one for the red, two for the white) vary according to the material, respectful of classic iconography and within an appearance of contemporaneity.
The electric and gas ovens that mark the pace of a real revolution in ceramic processing reach respectively 1,100 and 1,300 degrees with a capacity of up to 60 cm in one piece and 1 m over two pieces. In the laboratory located in Assemini, the glazing is performed inside a spray booth for the recovery of the powders.
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Fabio Frau
Fabio
Frau
As an artist of Sardinian ceramics, each of his crafted pieces provide a profound and never predictable reflection between object and space that host them, so the materials and colors of his birthplace burst into each of his creations. The craftsmanship is a medium between the object and its staging as a product of art.
Methods and Techniques
Craftsmanship is just a complex of knowledge that assists the craftsperson in making objects. There are forms that develop in certain places, with specific characteristics and their own symbology, while talking about tradition and typical ceramics could be a limitation to Fabio Frau’s expressiveness.
Specialized in modeling, he makes molds and molding by casting. It uses the pottery wheel and has an electric oven that reaches one thousand hundred degrees with a capacity of 60X75X60 centimeters.
Get to know our craftspeople
reflect to create…
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