In 2002, in thirty square meters
Ceramiche Sofia was founded in Caltagirone in 2002. Nicola Intonato had learned the trade as a boy, working for years in the town's workshops. With his brother Giuseppe he took on a thirty-square-meter space and began producing on his own, under his own name.
The space has changed since then. The way of working has not: pieces are modeled and decorated by hand, one at a time.
Nicola
Giuseppe
Handmade art majolica
We produce art majolica in Caltagirone. Moorish Heads are the largest part of our work and the one we are known for. Alongside them are oil lamps, candle holders and other pieces for the home.
Every piece is modeled and decorated by hand, so no two examples of the same shape ever come out identical. The small differences show. They are the sign that the piece passed through someone's hands.
We study the town's artisan production and select the pieces that truly tell the story of Calatino majolica, recognized everywhere for its artistic value. The experience built up over the years has led us to develop techniques of our own in finishing and firing: these are the two stages where a piece is decided.
The Caltagirone palette
Color is the most delicate part of the work. We use the classic Caltagirone palette, and we prepare the glazes ourselves, in the workshop.
We know the tradition and we respect it, but we don't simply repeat it: we put something of our own into the shapes and the decoration. That is what makes a Sofia piece recognizable next to another.
Those colors come from far away. Calatino glazes grow out of an Eastern recipe, pigments fused on a kaolin base, that the Arabs preserved and carried with them all the way to Sicily.
Between East and West
Ceramics have accompanied humankind since prehistory, and are thought to have been invented only twice, at two very distant points on the globe: among the Saharan peoples and in Japan. From there the craft spread everywhere.
The first masters of glazing were the Japanese, with their porcelain. Caltagirone stands at the other end of that journey: a Western tradition that carries within it, in its colors and its glazes, the memory of the East.
Showroom and workshop, in Caltagirone
There are two addresses in Caltagirone. The showroom at Corso Principe Amedeo di Savoia 13 displays the collections, and is open every day from 10:00 to 19:00. The workshop is somewhere else: that is where the pieces are made, and it runs Monday to Friday from 8:30 to 18:30.
If you're passing through Caltagirone, the showroom is the place to start.
How a piece is made
From clay to finished piece there are six stages: throwing, drying, first firing, glazing, decoration, aging. Not one of them is skipped.
Between one stage and the next the piece waits, and that time shows in the result.
In the end the point is this: to bring home an object that is worth something, and goes on being worth something as time passes.