A testa di moro is a ceramic head, hollow and glazed, modelled and painted by hand in Sicily. Where to put one is decided by four things, and none of them is the room: how high the surface sits relative to your eyes, what stands behind it, how much space is left around it, and which way the face is turned. Get those four right and the piece works anywhere. Get them wrong and no room will save it.
This article is about the rule. The list of situations around the house where you apply it is in decorating with a testa di moro.
1. Height is measured against your eyes, not from the floor
What decides is not how tall the furniture is in absolute terms, but where the face ends up in relation to the person looking. A face reads well when you meet it head on or slightly below eye level. Above that line it becomes an object that dominates; far below it turns into a skull cap seen from above, which is the worst angle for any portrait.
In practice: the eyes of somebody standing sit around 1.5 m from the floor, roughly 5 feet, and a hall or corridor console runs between 80 and 90 cm, roughly 31 to 35 inches. That is the common range of furniture on the market, not a standard. Add the height of the piece and you see at once where the face lands. A 40 cm head, roughly 16 inches, on a console of that kind comes close to the right level. A 25 cm one, roughly 10 inches, on the same piece of furniture stays well below, and it is better to raise the surface or move up a size.
Seated, the whole calculation changes, which is why a piece meant for the living room should not be judged while standing in the middle of it.
2. The background counts as much as the piece
A testa di moro is a solid form with a sharp outline. For that outline to read, the surface behind it has to leave it alone.
- A plain wall. The easiest condition, and the further the tone is from the piece, the more the edge separates.
- A dark ground. Pale finishes gain enormously. Against a dark wall a white or pearl piece looks lit even without a lamp on it.
- Never against the light. In front of a window the head turns into a silhouette and the decoration disappears for much of the day. If the surface has to be there, move the piece to one side of the opening.
- Patterned surfaces. Decorated wallpaper, heavily worked panelling and crowded bookshelves cancel the outline. In those cases a plain colour line works better than a rich decoration.
3. The space around it is part of the object
A sculptural piece needs emptiness to be recognised as one. The right amount is easy to check by eye: around the base there should be a clear band at least as wide as the piece itself. Below that, the head joins the group of objects next to it and stops being read on its own.
The same holds vertically. On a bookshelf, if only a few centimetres of air are left above the head, the piece looks squeezed into its slot.
4. Distance from the edge is a question of stability
Glazed terracotta is heavy, and the base of a testa di moro is narrower than the body, so the centre of gravity is high. Two practical consequences.
First: the piece goes back from the front edge, so that no part of it overhangs. On a narrow console, where the depth of the furniture is barely more than the base, that can mean choosing a smaller size rather than giving up stability.
Second: the places people pass matter. A cabinet along a corridor, the corner where the shopping gets put down, the shelf next to a door that slams. Those are where accidents actually happen, and no rule of composition makes up for them.
5. Which way it faces
This is the one almost nobody thinks about, and it changes the effect more than any of the others. The head has a gaze, and that gaze points somewhere in the room.
Turned towards the middle of the room it accompanies whoever arrives and closes the composition inwards. Turned towards a wall or a blind corner it looks like an object put there to fill a gap. In a room people walk through, turning it along the direction of travel means you meet it at three quarters, which is the angle where a face in relief reads best.
In an entrance this carries extra weight, because the traditional meaning of the threshold comes into it. That one we deal with in the testa di moro in the entryway.
What changes when there are two
A pair does not behave like two single pieces stood next to each other, and it is positioned on its own terms.
- They need an axis and a centre. Two heads ask for something to hold them together: the midline of a console, the sides of a mirror, the ends of a shelf. Without a shared reference they look like two objects that happened to land on the same surface.
- The gazes have to be handled. Turned towards each other they create a scene closed between the two pieces. Both facing forward they create a front. Diverging, each towards the outside, usually does not work.
- The space needed is more than double. Beyond the clear band around each one there is the distance between them, or they read as a single block.
Table Lamp with Lemons h 55 cm (ceramic h 25 cm, fabric lampshade Ø 35 cm) — Female, Blue and Orange
Buy now
Lamp with Head and Lemons h 70 cm (ceramic h 40 cm, fabric lampshade Ø 45 cm) — Male White, Blue, and Orange
Buy now
Table Lamp with Lemons h 55 cm (ceramic h 25 cm, fabric lampshade Ø 35 cm) — Male White, Blue and Orange
Buy now
Table Lamp h 65 cm (ceramic h 38 cm, fabric lampshade Ø 40 cm) — Female, Blue and Orange
Buy nowQuestions that keep coming up
Centred on the furniture, or off to one side?
Centred if the piece is on its own and the furniture is symmetrical. Off to one side if there is something else on the surface, a lamp for instance: in that case put the two elements at the two thirds of the surface rather than side by side in the middle.
Will a wall shelf hold it?
That depends on the load the shelf is rated for and on how it is fixed, not on the piece. It is worth checking before buying, because a mid size head is not a light object.
If the room is small, is a small size better?
Not always. In a small room one piece of decent size works better than two or three small ones spread about: the result is tidier and the space looks less crowded.
Should it be kept out of direct sunlight?
Prolonged direct exposure is better avoided, and that is a question of looking after the piece rather than of placing it.
The short version
Before you put the piece down, check four things in this order: where the face falls in relation to your eyes, what is behind it, how much emptiness is left around it, where it looks. If all four hold, the room is the right one.
Plain colour lines are the easiest to place, because they tolerate difficult backgrounds without losing the outline. They are in essenzialità moderna and in monocromia di blu. And if the surface you have in mind is the one where a lamp would go, there is a version that solves the light and the object together.
