Turning the Passage of Time Into Ceramic Art

Lots of brands team up with designers with varying degrees of success. When Italian ceramics company, Florim enlisted Giorgia Zanelleto and Daniele Bortotto to design the ‘Stories’ collection for the relaunch of CEDIT – Ceramiche d’Italia, it turned out to be a multi-award-winning collaboration.

In addition to the NYCxDESIGN Prize(ICFF) and Hospitality Design Awards, the product ‘Castle’ from the ‘Stories’ collection won the “Red Dot Award: Best of the Best” in the “Product Design 2017” category, one of the first, most historic international awards for design.

The CEDIT – Ceramiche d’Italia ‘Stories’ collection, comprising six different sets of wall coverings, inscribed by the young designers with the theme of the relentless passage of time. The duo explored Italy’s architectural landscape – its interiors and its nostalgic contrasts – of stately homes, villas and aristocratic palaces, farmhouses and old factories, and the environmental surroundings of a distinctively Italian manufacturing past, to source their repertoire of images and their inspiration for conveying a distinctively Italian mood.

Zanellato and Bortotto have selected five different environments, located in precise contexts and areas, and identified a specific effect caused by the aging process in each of them – the faded fresco on the wall of a villa, the damp found on plain or decorative plasterwork or the form of rust stains on walls.

Looking at the changes brought about by time, the designers undertake a journey of exploration and interpretation of the gradients of color, shade, texture and consistency of large portions of a plastered wall.

“Technological innovation enables us to reproduce on large-sized ceramic materials all the effects of wear and stratification that normally only time is able to create,” said Stefano Torrenti, Florim Ceramiche CEO.

The unique nature of these moments and events is translated into ceramics, for centuries an art form produced only by craftsmen, a material which can be molded to create original, unrepeatable panels even in large sizes. The slabs, designed for covering indoor and in some cases outdoor walls, contain stunning pigments and color variations, the memory of an illustrious past and custodians of antique, vanishing traditions and knowledge.