From clay to finished piece there are six moments: throwing, drying, first firing, glazing, decoration and aging. Not one is skipped and not one is shortened.
Between one stage and the next the piece waits, and that time shows in the result: it is the difference between an object that is built and one that is merely produced.
It all begins by giving shape to the clay, and there are two ways to do it: on the wheel, where the piece is born turning under your hands, or by modeling, building it up by hand piece by piece. The choice depends on the object.
A formed piece doesn't go into the kiln straight away: first it has to lose all the water the clay holds. The drying is slow and natural, with no jumps in temperature, because a sudden change here means a crack later. Only then comes the first firing, at around 1000 degrees for about thirteen hours.
The piece comes out of the first kiln porous and matte. The glaze, based on oxides and kaolin, covers it in a full white: it is the canvas the decorators will work on. Without this stage the color would have nothing to rest on.
This is where the piece takes on its character. We study and prepare the colors ourselves in the workshop, and the painting is done by hand, one stroke at a time. It is the stage at which two objects of the same shape stop being the same.
The second firing is the one that decides. The heat fixes the colors and draws out the brilliance of the glaze, and by working the lights and the darks the crystallized surface is given depth, an effect that looks to Caravaggio.
The pine cone is the extreme case of all this: the base is thrown on the wheel, then every single segment is applied by hand, one after another. That is why no two pine cones are ever identical, and it is exactly what an industrial piece cannot give you.