For a long time I walked straight past Fanciullacci. I liked it well enough, but I didn't know I was looking at it.
On my last trip to Turin I didn't make that mistake. The jug now on my shelf (and in the shop, if you'd like it) is a Fratelli Fanciullacci sgraffito piece from the 1950s or 60s. It has a bird picked out in oxblood, green and ochre, and, unusually, the FF mark on its base. It seemed a good excuse to tell the pottery's story properly.
A family that came out of Ginori
The Fanciullacci name was part of Tuscan ceramics long before there was a Fanciullacci pottery. For the best part of a century, members of the family worked at the Ginori porcelain manufactory at Doccia, just outside Florence, as painters, chemists and managers. Raffaello Fanciullacci rose to be its director general. Then, he left to go it alone.
In 1862 (some accounts say 1858) he opened a pottery at Capraia Fiorentina, a small town on the Arno west of Florence, with about twenty-five workers. The early output was everyday work: tableware, kitchen jars and pharmacy vases, with some decorative majolica alongside. His sons joined him, then his grandsons, and the business became Fratelli Fanciullacci, the Fanciullacci brothers.
Across the river to Montelupo
In the early 1910s the brothers moved production across the Arno to Montelupo Fiorentino, for the least romantic of reasons: the railway. A factory near the tracks could send its wares to Florence, to the ports and out of Italy far more cheaply than one that relied on carts. Montelupo was also a fitting address. The town had been making majolica since the Renaissance, so a pottery arriving there was joining a very old conversation.
By the First World War the catalogue ran to roughly a thousand models, and the firm had become the largest employer in town. The 1920s were its golden years, with more than 130 people working there. Through the Second World War it was one of very few ceramics factories in the area that never shut its doors, which says something about the family's stubbornness.
Whatever the public wanted
What I like most about Fanciullacci is that it never pretended to be grander than it was. It made what people wanted to buy, and it made it quickly. Raffaellesco, Art Nouveau and Art Deco sat in the catalogue next to pieces nodding at Futurism and Cubism. Aldo Londi, the man who later shaped Bitossi and gave us Rimini Blu, spent his early years working there.
After the war the factory turned towards export. By the 1950s and 60s, foreign markets were thought to account for about ninety per cent of what it made. This is the period collectors now look for, with its sgraffito decoration, thick lava glazes and stylised town scenes. Mark Hill gives the pottery a whole chapter in his brilliant book Alla Moda, which is the best place to start if you want to learn more.
The same variety makes Fanciullacci hard to pin down. There was no single house style, few records survived, and the designers are mostly anonymous. Most pieces carry nothing on the base, or just "Italy" and a shape number. So a signed FF piece is a nice thing to turn over in your hands.
The sgraffito bird
Sgraffito comes from the Italian for "to scratch", which is exactly what it is. The pot is coated in slip, the design is scratched through it so the clay beneath shows, and the lines are filled with colour before glazing. The drawing is done with a point rather than a brush, so it has a slightly nervy, graphic quality that paint doesn't.
On my jug, the bird sits among scrolling foliage across the shoulder, with incised banding lower down, a dark rope-twist handle and a pinched pour. It stands 23 centimetres, and it's generous and round in the hand. There's rubbing to the slip ground, which is what happens when a rustic surface like this is actually used. I'd much rather that than a piece that looks as though it has never left a cabinet. It's honest wear, not damage.
November 1966
The story turns in November 1966, when the Arno flooded. The Montelupo factory went under water. More than a thousand moulds were lost, the kilns were damaged, and stock waiting to be shipped to America was swept away along with the raw clay. The factory stood still for over a year, and many skilled workers left to find work elsewhere.
The brothers did try to rebuild, but production and quality never recovered, and collectors generally treat 1966 as the end of the work worth seeking out. The firm finally closed in 1988. The old factory still stands beside the railway line, a shell the town bought in 2004, with redevelopment promised for years. Many of the people trained there went on to open their own workshops, so a good part of the pottery's legacy is scattered across Tuscany under other names.
For a buyer, this is a useful thing to know. When you see c.1950s–1960s on a Fanciullacci listing, it isn't vague dating for the sake of it. It's the window before the flood.
Where I'd put it
As always, I'd let the Italian piece do the talking and keep everything around it quiet. Australian light is kind to earthenware. The oxblood deepens and the ochre warms up, and the scratched lines catch a little shadow.
Put a few dried stems in it, or some branches cut from the garden, or leave it empty and let the form carry it. I've written before that a new kitchen needs one old piece, and this is precisely the kind I meant.
So there it is: a family out of Ginori, a move to Montelupo for the railway, a thousand moulds and every style going, a flood that ended the best of it, and a scratched bird on a jug that has been in use for sixty-odd years and deserves sixty more