A testa di moro is a Sicilian ceramic head, and it does not begin on the wheel. The wheel is for round pieces, vases and bowls, where the form turns around an axis and the hands go with it. A face does not turn. It has a nose that projects, two sides that must resemble each other without being identical, a crown that leaves the outline. So it starts from a mould, and from there on it is almost all hand work.
The full cycle runs through six stages: forming, drying, first firing, glazing, decoration, finishing. On the heads with gold and lustre a seventh is added, a third pass through the kiln. Weeks can go by between the first and the last.
It starts from the earth
The clay comes from local pits, the Santo Pietro area a few kilometres from Caltagirone. That is why ceramics are worked here and not somewhere else: the raw material was under the workshops' feet. Clay good for a head has to do two difficult things at once, stay soft while it is modelled and carry the weight of a crown without giving way as it dries.
A detail that surprises people outside the trade: the piece comes out of the kiln smaller than it went in. Clay loses water and shrinks. Whoever models knows it, and always works slightly larger than the final size.
The stages, one by one
1. Forming
The mould gives the basic volume: the dome, the neck, the set of the face. The piece that comes out of it is still mute. The features are barely indicated and every head looks like every other.
Then the work that counts begins. With ribs and tools the eyes are opened, the lids cut, the wings of the nose and the lip defined, the locks of the beard or the hair marked. The crown is built separately and applied on top, leaf by leaf, together with the earrings and the jewellery when the line calls for them. It is the most delicate point of the whole cycle. A badly attached crown comes off in drying, or opens up inside the kiln.
2. Drying
This is where pieces are lost. The drying has to be slow and even, in a place without draughts and without swings in temperature. How long depends on how thick the wall is: some pieces take days, others sit there for the best part of a month. The trouble is that a head does not have a constant thickness. The wall of the dome is thin, the crown is solid, the neck is thicker. The thin parts dry first and shrink first, and if the rhythm is not governed the crack arrives on schedule at the join.
3. First firing
The kiln climbs to between 900 and 1000 degrees, roughly 1650 to 1830 Fahrenheit, and stays there for some thirteen hours. That pass turns clay into ceramic: hard, light, still porous. It is called biscotto, and it is matt, rough, the colour of earth. Wet it and it soaks up like a sponge. That thirst is exactly what the next stage needs.
4. Glazing
The white glaze is a mix based on kaolin and oxides, following a recipe of eastern origin that the Arabs brought into the Mediterranean and kept. The biscuit is dipped and drinks the water out of the glaze in an instant, holding a white, dry, powdery layer on the surface.
From that moment the piece is not touched with fingers again. A fingerprint on raw glaze stays where it is, and after firing you can see it.
5. Decoration
This is the stage that decides what a head is worth. It is painted with a brush directly onto the raw glaze, which absorbs the colour the moment it is touched: there is no second thought, nothing is erased, nothing is covered. The stroke is given once, with a steady hand.
There is a further difficulty, and decorators have always lived with it. Before firing, the pigments are not the colour they will be afterwards. A green that looks grey in the pot comes out brilliant, a barely visible blue turns deep. Whoever decorates judges the work from memory, not with their eyes.
6. Second firing
The second pass through the kiln comes at between 980 and 1080 degrees, roughly 1800 to 1975 Fahrenheit. The glaze vitrifies, the colours go inside the glass and stay there: from then on they fear neither sun, nor water, nor detergent. It is also the moment when the ceramic decides something on its own. The glaze can pull back on a relief and uncover a thread of biscuit, gather into a small run under the chin, or close with a veil of the finest crazing on the back of the neck.
7. Third firing, for gold and lustre
Gold, platinum and pearlescent lustres cannot take the temperatures of the first two firings, they would burn. They are applied afterwards, on the finished piece, and they ask for a third pass at a lower temperature. It is a risk taken on work that is already complete: if something goes wrong at this stage you do not lose a decoration, you lose the whole head. That is part of why the lines with gold and lustre cost more than the others.
They are gathered here: Madreperla Oro e Lustri.
8. Finishing and ageing
The last operation is the one that gives depth. On antiqued pieces the work is on the shadows: the undercuts are darkened and the relief is left in the light, with a chiaroscuro that in our workshop looks openly to the painting of Caravaggio. It is there to obtain what no photograph gives back well, a face that changes expression depending on how you light it.
What happens when something does not go to plan
The things that can go wrong are more or less always the same, and people in the workshop recognise them at a glance.
- The glaze pulls back. On the edge of a relief, usually the crown or the cheekbone, the white layer draws back by a hair and lets the biscuit show through.
- The drying crack. It nearly always starts where two different thicknesses meet, between neck and dome or at the base of the crown.
- The colour shifts. A slightly different kiln temperature moves the tone of a green or a yellow, and two batches of the same line never come out identical.
- The run. Molten glaze slides and stops where it finds a ledge, leaving a vitrified drop that is sometimes a fault and sometimes the best thing about the piece.
On this our workshop has always said one thing, and we keep saying it: the small imperfections are what tell you the work is original. It is not a formula for excusing mistakes. It is the technical consequence of a cycle where seven stages out of eight are entrusted to a hand and a kiln.
Why two heads from the same line are not the same
Because none of the stages you have just read is perfectly repeatable. The mould gives the same base, then a person refines the face and hands change from day to day. The brush lays down more or less colour. The piece takes a different spot in the kiln and gets a few degrees more or less.
Put two heads of the same line side by side and you see them resemble each other closely and never coincide. It is the opposite of what an industrial mould does, where the aim is for the tenth piece to be indistinguishable from the first. The difference between the two ways of producing is explained in handmade or factory made.
How long it really takes
For a simple piece it is a matter of weeks, counting the drying that cannot be hurried without ruining everything. For a large head, with a rich crown and a third firing, the count can reach a few months, because every firing is a wait and every wait is a risk.
That is why these objects are not produced to stock in unlimited quantities, and why a line can be unavailable for a while.
Testa di Moro Sognia h 40 cm / 15¾", Antique Mother of Pearl Gold and Lustre, Matt Face | Caltagirone Ceramics
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Buy nowCommon questions
How many firings does a testa di moro need?
Two in most cases: the first turns clay into biscuit, the second fixes glaze and colours. Heads with gold, platinum or pearlescent lustres take a third, at a lower temperature.
If a mould is used, is it still handmade?
The mould gives the starting volume, the way the wheel gives it to a vase. Everything that makes a head recognisable, meaning the features, the crown, the jewellery, the glaze and the decoration, is done by hand afterwards. Two pieces out of the same mould arrive at the end different.
Is the crown glued on?
No. It is applied while the clay is still fresh and fired together with the piece, so crown and head become one body. A crown glued on after firing would be a sign to treat with suspicion.
Why is there a speck or a small irregularity in the glaze on my piece?
Because glaze is a glass that forms in the kiln and behaves in a way that is not entirely predictable. A speck, fine crazing or a slight difference in tone against the photograph are in the nature of the product. A perfectly uniform piece has usually been decorated with a transfer.
How much does a testa di moro weigh?
It depends on the size and the thickness, and weight is one of the most useful pieces of information when buying at a distance. It is given on the listing for each piece, along with the height.
Where to start
Now that you know how one is born, looking at the catalogue is a different thing: you recognise the mark of the rib on a face, you understand why a crown costs, and you see where the kiln left its signature.
Every piece is in teste di moro.
