Come nasce Ceramiche Sofia: la nostra storia - Moorish Head

Who Makes the Teste di Moro You Buy Here

A testa di moro is a Sicilian ceramic head, and the ones on this site come out of a workshop in Caltagirone. They do not arrive from an import warehouse or from third party suppliers: they are formed, refined, glazed and decorated in there, by people who do this trade every day.

It sounds like a small detail. It is not, because on an object that is also sold as a Sicilian symbol, the distance between "made in Caltagirone" and "sold in Caltagirone" is the whole of the difference.

Where they are made

The workshop is in the craft district of the town. It is where the kilns are, the moulds, the modelling tools, the drying shelves and the jars of pigment. It is not a shop and it has no window display.

The showroom is a different thing and it sits in the centre. There the pieces are seen finished, lined up, lit. In the workshop you see them half made, which is more interesting.

The trades it takes to make one head

Nobody makes a testa di moro from beginning to end on their own. The cycle passes through different hands, and each stage asks for an eye trained on one thing only.

The one who forms

Prepares the clay, brings it to the right consistency, puts it in the mould and takes out the basic volume. It looks like the least artistic job and it is the one that decides whether the piece will make it to the end: a wrong thickness at this stage becomes a crack three weeks later, when the work is already done on top of it.

The one who refines the face

This is the person who takes an anonymous head and gives it an expression. With the tools they open the eyes, cut the lids, define the nose and the mouth, mark beard and hair, then build and apply the crown with its jewellery.

This is the point where a line becomes recognisable. Whoever refines works within a margin of millimetres: a severe gaze and a soft one, on the same starting base, are two different cuts of the eyelid.

The one who glazes

Dips the biscuit into the white glaze and checks that the layer stays even, with no runs and no bare patches, including inside the undercuts of the crown where the liquid struggles to reach. From then on the piece is not touched with bare hands again.

The one who decorates

Paints with a brush on the raw glaze, which absorbs the colour instantly. Nothing is erased and nothing is corrected. Every stroke is final, and it is given while working with pigments that before the kiln are a different colour from the one they will end up.

It is the longest trade of the group to learn, and the most recognisable. Different people decorating the same line leave a slightly different stroke, and that is why two twin pieces are never superimposable.

The one who looks after the kiln

Loads, spaces, sets the temperature curves, decides where every piece goes. A centimetre further along inside the kiln means a few degrees of difference, and a few degrees of difference shows in the colour.

Exactly how many people there are, and who does what, we are not writing here: it changes with the seasons and with the work in hand, and we would rather not give a number that will not be true in six months. The point that matters is another one, and it is that these four trades stay four distinct trades: there is no machine that merges two of them.

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Where this workshop comes from

In 2002 two brothers from Caltagirone, Nicola and Giuseppe Intonato, left steady jobs, one in a ceramics factory and one in a cigarette factory, and set up on their own. Thirty square metres, roughly 320 square feet. First a garage, then a rented unit.

At the beginning they did not make heads: caskets, tureens, baroque putti, all decorated by hand. The teste di moro came later, along with the rest of the catalogue, and over the years they became the thing the workshop gets sought out for. Today a second generation works alongside the two founders.

We do not tell this for colour. We tell it because it explains a choice: people who learned the trade behind a bench tend not to move production elsewhere, even when it would pay.

What changes for you, buying

Knowing who is behind a piece changes three concrete things.

  • You can ask. If you want the real weight, the exact height, whether a head has a hole in the base or what the finish looks like in person, the question reaches somebody holding that piece.
  • A flaw has an explanation. Crazing, a speck, a tone slightly different from the photograph are not a quality check that was skipped: they are the result of a cycle in which the kiln has a say. As we have always repeated, the small imperfections are what tell you the work is original.
  • The line continues. If you buy a head today and want its companion in six months, the order goes back to the same workshop, with the same mould and the same glaze recipes. It will not be identical, but it will belong.

How you can see a piece was made by hand

There are signs series production cannot simulate: the slight asymmetry between the two sides of the face, the edge of the glaze pulling back on a relief, the brushstroke changing thickness along a leaf, the weight that does not match to the gram between two pieces of the same size.

The full comparison, with the checks to run one by one, is in handmade or factory made.

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Common questions

Do you make the heads you sell?

Yes. They are formed, refined, glazed, decorated and fired in the workshop in Caltagirone.

How many people work on a single head?

More than one, always. Forming, refining the face, glazing and decorating are distinct trades and in practice the same person does not do them all. The exact count changes with the period, the principle does not: no head leaves the hands of one person alone.

Are the heads made one at a time or in series?

Work goes by kiln loads, so several pieces together, but every head still passes through individual refining and decoration. That is why pieces from the same load come out similar and not the same.

Can the workshop be visited?

The showroom in the centre of town is open to the public, and there the pieces are seen finished. The workshop is a place of work, with kilns running and raw pieces waiting: if you would like to see it, ask first rather than turning up, and we will tell you whether it is a good day.

How long has it been going?

Since 2002, when the Intonato brothers opened the first thirty square metre workshop.

The catalogue, now that you know where it comes from

Every listing is a piece that passed through these hands. The full catalogue is in teste di moro.

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