Type:

Luoghi della cultura; Ente/Istituzione

Category:

Museums

“Ubaldo Grazia Maioliche” Factory Museum The Museo di Fabbrica “Ubaldo Grazia Maioliche” is located along the main road running below the medieval burgh of Deruta, where the majority of the ceramic artistic workshops have always been concentrated. With its significant collection of artistic ceramics, the small museum represents the destination of an itinerary visit that starts with the factory, the production site of the items displayed. This is the same site where the entire ceramic production cycle is still run today—from the clay processing, inside special containers, to the firings—and the remnants of the first old factory kiln, dating from a period between the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, are assimilated in the new building. Inaugurated in 2002, the Museum has its premises on the last floor of the factory, and exhibits more than 500 pieces among those that have characterized its production, starting with the early samples from the 19th century up to those realized in the 1960s. The large family collection, put together by the current owner to contrast the dispersion of samples in the antique market and in various European museums, illustrates the original pieces and the copies executed by the artists who participated in the factory activities. A nucleus of medieval painted ceramic fragments, which were found near the factory, opens the itinerary. A section is dedicated to the masters Alpinolo Magnini and Ubaldo Grazia, who in the course of the 1920s reproduced ostentatious pieces, plates made with the “lustro” technique—a procedure largely used by the majolica makers from Deruta in the 16th century—rendering the glaze iridescent with gold reflexes by adding metallicsalts and a third firing in a kiln without oxygen.