Associazione Italiana Città della Ceramica
Buongiorno Ceramica

“Una Strada per la Ceramica - A Way to Clay” is an important project started in 2018 between the Italian Association of Cities of Ceramics (AiCC) and the Fuping Pottery Art Village in the province of Xian (the town famous for the Terracotta Warriors) which intended to realize a series of workshops in China, between July 2019 and September 2020 involving 50 Italian ceramists. 

The project obviously stopped in February 2020 and will resume as soon as possible, but the contacts have never stopped and the bond of friendship has strengthened, with a continuous exchange of news and proposals for help.

AiCC today publishes a photographic initiative of friendship and support to the health emergency, Chinese in a frst moment and later Italian: each participant in the project has taken a picture with a ceramic work and a friendship “sign”, which contains a quote from an exchange of messages between the Presidents of China and Italy on February 13th, 2020: “Hard times are temporary, friendships last forever”. 

Italy - China project “Una Strada per la Ceramica - A Way to Clay”.

A friendship initiative between Italy and China in the name of ceramics, promoted by the Italian Association of Cities of Ceramics to support the common health emergency.

As part of the Italy-China project “Una Strada per la Ceramica - A Way to Clay”, the Italian Association of Cities of Ceramics (AiCC) has launched a friendship initiative in support of the current health emergency that has developed in particular between the two countries.

“Una Strada per la Ceramica - A Way to Clay” is an important cultural and professional exchange project with China, developed by AiCC since 2018, which involves in particular the Fuping Pottery Art Village managed by the Xu family, a few kilometers from Xian (the town famous for the Terracotta Warriors), in the Shaanxi region, and created with the advice of the great Chinese master and publisher I Chi Hsu and the Italian Giovanni Mirulla (editor of the magazine La Ceramica Moderna & Antica).

The general aims of the project are:

- to promote the ceramics of our countries

- to improve the technical and artistic knowledge among the ceramists

- to bring our Countries closer together and increase mutual friendship

The project, which originally intended to organize a series of workshops in China, between July 2019 and September 2020 – addressed to a total of 40-50 carefully selected Italian ceramists, coming in particular from the Ceramic Cities members of AiCC network - after the realization of two of the workshops scheduled (with 14 ceramists involved), has had inevitably to stop, in early February 2020, due to the covid-19 emergency that broke out in China, blocking a third group of 10 ceramists already with flight tickets and visas in their pocket.

The link between the participants in the project, in China and in Italy, has continued and indeed strengthened, with a continuous exchange of news and proposals for help, but above all with demonstrations of friendship, which culminated in late February in the launch of a photographic initiative to support the Chinese health emergency. In fact, each participant in the project has taken a picture with a ceramic work and a “sign” of with a friendship declaration, which in particular contains a quote from an exchange of messages that took place between the Presidents of China and Italy on February 13th, 2020: “Hard times are temporary, friendships list forever”.

In the meantime, as is known, the emergency has moved more and more towards Europe, finding its epicenter in Italy, and today the conclusion and diffusion of the friendship manifesto finds the two nations unfortunately assimilated in the seriousness of the crisis and the friendship still more consolidated.

“For years we have been working to make the ceramic system more and more integrated, both nationally and internationally”, declares Massimo Isola, President of AiCC and Deputy Mayor of the City of Faenza. “This is why the advent of the virus has had a disruptive effect in our world. A very loud cry that forced us to suspend important and profound professional, creative, economic, even human relationships. Projects have been cancelled, suspended, postponed.

China was the first Country to be attacked: a Country with an extraordinary excellence in ceramic production and with which we have very important relationships.

For this reason, it was natural and spontaneous to start this ‘communication lab’, as a response to a need to enhance these relationships, during the crisis and beyond.

These relationships make us stronger today, in approaching the crisis, and give us energy for the aftermath, for the restart.

With Fuping in particular, we are building an extraordinary path. The energies are still alive and we have diverted them, temporarily, on this project of communication.

It is a great mutual embrace, which claims an aspect that is very dear to us: since mankind has existed, ceramics is a material that has united cultures, stories, persons and peoples. Ceramics is a key material in the construction of civilization projects, because it contains traces of everyday life together with traces of thought. Functionality and aesthetics, poetry. In the strong passages of history, ceramic has always been there”.

The project, however, is not canceled nor finished, but remains shelved, pending the terrible emergency in progress.

“A third group of 10 potters was ready to leave last February 12th”, underlined Giuseppe Olmeti, Coordinator of AiCC and of the project, “but their departure is only postponed.

In the same way, we are ready to resume and conclude the selection between the more than 80 applications received, to define the remaining two groups.

Nothing changes as well for the projects of the final exhibitions of a selection of the works created during the project, to be carried out in a traveling format both in China and in various Italian Ceramic Cities.

We are sure that on that occasion, hoping already in 2021, we will be able to honor and celebrate art and ceramics but mainly friendship between us and our two countries, that, unfortunatly also thanks to this hard times, will last forever”.

The covid-19 emergency that is affecting Italy has particularly hit some Ceramics Cities and in this regard the President of AiCC, Massimo Isola, commented: “In Italy the relations between Ceramic Cities have become stronger and stronger. Our 46 cities work together and are aware of sharing a part of the identities of all of us.

We are close, very close.

Therefore, the message of solidarity that we send to our particularly affected cities is even more authentic and, we believe, necessary. Lodi, Ariano Irpino, Pesaro, Savona, are some of the cities that in recent weeks have had to fight even more significantly against this dramatic virus.

To them goes the greeting and comfort of all our cities, which are active on a daily basis for the same emergency. We are a cohesive team. Now we are involved in containing the virus diffusion, then - together - we will build a great project to relaunch Italian and international ceramics and I am convinced that we will do an extraordinary job”.

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