Certaldo · Val d’Elsa · Tuscany
Hand-painted ceramics,
one piece at a time
In a studio at Fiano, a hamlet of Certaldo between Florence and Siena, every piece goes through the kiln twice and under the brush once. The decoration is painted freehand onto raw glaze: from that moment on, nothing can be corrected.
Painted freehand
No transfers, no prints. The brush meets raw glaze, which drinks the colour the instant it is laid down.
Fired twice
Once before the decoration and once after. The second firing fixes the colour and decides how deep it will be: that is why no two pieces come out the same.
Signed by the maker
Every piece leaves the studio signed by Gabriella Carbini.
Open to visitors
The workshop is also the shop: you can walk in, watch the work, and buy on the spot.
The workshop
Chianti Ceramiche Carbini Gabriella
The studio is at Fiano, a hamlet of Certaldo in the Val d’Elsa, province of Florence. San Gimignano and its towers are fifteen minutes away, Florence a little over half an hour, and the Chianti hills begin just above the village, towards Barberino Tavarnelle.
Gabriella Carbini shapes, glazes and paints everything herself. There is no decorating department: there is a bench, and whatever happens to be drying on it today.
The catalogue
Three ways into the workshop
From large pieces made to be looked at to small ones made to be given, by way of the table you use every day.
How a piece is made
Three stages, and two of them are final
The shape can still be corrected while the clay is damp. After the first firing there is nothing left to discuss. And the decoration, painted onto raw glaze, is absorbed the moment the brush touches it: you do not go over it twice, and you cannot take it off.
Biscuit ware
What comes out of the first firing
Out of the first kiln the pieces come as biscotto: porous, matt, sand-coloured. In that state they drink glaze like blotting paper, and it is the last moment at which the colour can still be decided.
Anyone visiting the workshop will find them stacked on the bench next to the finished pieces. They are the same thing, two weeks apart. [TO BE CONFIRMED AT THE STUDIO: drying days before the first firing]
The patterns
Six lines, recognisable across a room
Each line has its own palette and its own difficulty. A pale ground forgives no hesitation; black forgives no crooked line.
Commissions
A piece made for one particular place
Sometimes what is needed is a size the catalogue does not have: a plate for a niche, a plaque with a name on it, a set in a chosen pattern. Commissions are agreed in advance, with a drawing and a quotation, because once a piece is fired not one letter can be changed.
Timing depends on the piece and on the kiln, not on a price list: two firings cannot be hurried. [TO BE CONFIRMED AT THE STUDIO: indicative lead time for a commission]
Where
Via Firenze 83, Fiano di Certaldo
Fiano is a hamlet of Certaldo, in the Val d’Elsa, province of Florence. Above the modern town stands Certaldo Alto, the red-brick hill village where Giovanni Boccaccio spent his last years and died in 1375; you reach it on foot or by funicular. The studio is in the lower town, on the road named after Florence.
From here San Gimignano is a quarter of an hour away, Florence a little over half an hour, and the Chianti hills start immediately above, towards Barberino Tavarnelle.
- Monday – Friday 9am–1pm · 4–7.30pm
- Saturday 9am–1pm
- Sunday closed
