DAN'S PAPERS, July 10, 2009 Page 68 www.danshamptons.com
House/ home Earthly Delights
By April Gonzales
The second presentation in Madoo’s speaker series will take place this weekend. Mara Seibert will discuss the fine art of Italian handcrafted ceramics that come from the Impruneta region just outside of Florence. The talk will be from 4-6 p.m. this Saturday at Bob Dash’s well-known Sagaponack landscape creation (located south of the post office) that has been termed one of the 10 most beautiful gardens in America. For over 15 years, Seibert and her partner, Lenore Rice, have been importing the heavy duty handmade all weather terra cotta pots that they discovered while on vacation. In recent times, she has noted that as they discuss both work and family with the Italian artisans, the future of the workshops comes into question, as many will not be taken over by the next generation. Is this centuries old technique becoming a dying art form, is a question she has begun to ask herself? As of now, special molds that were used to produce the original pots from the Biltmore Estate were discovered and came back into use, but the technique for fixing a broken mold is a skill that died over 300 years ago when the molds were first made. If the molds break, then those kinds of special commission planters, so much a part of our
The Art of Ceramics at Madoo
American landscape history, cannot be made again. More than anything, Seibert would like to bring people to an appreciation of the work from Impruneta as an art, not just a craft. In outlining the history of ceramics from this region of Italy, Seibert will discuss the Duomo in Florence. Brunelleschi, the architect, specified Impruneta tiles for his daring roof design. Della Robia went to the region for the special soil rich in iron and salts that make up the clay body needed for long wearing pots, sculpture and architectural accents that
becomes a light pink when fired. In the same air as artists from history, Seibert and Rice developed the American Collection, which is a combination of American designers and artists whose concepts were then transferred into clay by the most skilled of the modern day ceramic workshops who often just dig the clay out of the ground behind their studios. But even in their everyday production of large classic Italian rolled rim pots, no two are the same, each one is hand made. When Bob Dash was called on to design a planter for them, he thought that it was a great thrill to make a pot – being a painter and print maker. “I chose the oldest form I could think of, the amphora and covered it with Phoenician-like stick writing. I used a matchstick to incise the clay and rubbed some out. It had to look like it had been exhumed from a shipwreck and had been down there a very long time.” In the time honored tradition, Dash made the rolled rim and handles himself. The poem is a riff on Gertrude Stein and begins: “I am a rose, my eyes are blue. I am a rose who are you?” You can read the rest of the poem on the Madoo pot designed by Dash but handmade in Italy this weekend at Madoo gardens, after the lecture by Seibert.
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