Antique ceramic pot dating back to early 1900, Grottaglie (Apulia, Italy) buying

This antique pot - in the local dialect (“grottagliese”) “Pignata” - belongs to the cooking pottery category; it was fire resistant and could endure sudden and repeated temperature variations. With its characteristic brick-red colour, it was normally used to cook vegetables, meat and pulses directly on hot coals, the signs of which it still carries. Its inside and upper part was glazed, for hygienic purposes, so it could easily be washed up.

Imperfections and wear are distinguishing signs of authenticity.

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It was produced in Grottaglie, in the Southern Italian province of Taranto, Apulia. The town is part of a selected group of 40 Italian cities producing DOC ceramic artefacts; in fact, it is the only Italian town with a whole neighbourhood entirely dedicated to the production of these handicrafts. For centuries in the heart of the town, along the San Giorgio Ravine (“Gravina San Giorgio”), skilled ceramists have been opening their workshops and studios, in which kilns for firing ceramics were built directly into the rocks of ancient hypogean spaces, formerly used also as oil mills. “Li Camenn're” – literally, “the chimneys”, e.i. the kilns for firing ceramics - is how the locals call the medieval neighbourhood built in the XIV century, in which, nowadays, the clay is modelled.
A 1463 document from the Royal Customhouse of Taranto attests the production and trade of majolica. In this period Grottaglie had become the largest supplier of ceramic artefacts for domestic use in the service of the harbour traffic and trade. Starting from 1567, archive documents list ceramists' names under the status of “cretari”, namely producers of objects of domestic and common use. In the XVII century some “faenzari” will appear, craftsmen who dedicated themselves to making more refined, selected types of ceramic. buying