BottegaNove creates decorated mosaic pieces both in ceramics and porcelain.
We have met Christian Pegoraro, a third-generation master ceramist, who has been able to re-interpret the ancient tradition of ceramics processing through innovative thinking.
What is the story of BottegaNove? How did you start your activity?
BottegaNove was created at the end of 2013, with the aim to produce decorated mosaic pieces in ceramics and porcelain, following the working process used in artistic ceramics. I grew up amidst ceramics in Nove, where my grandfather established his own artistic manufacture firm in 1964. The activity was then continued by my father and is now carried forward by myself and another associate partner.
Over the years, we have cooperated with important firms in the coating sector, providing specific decorations based on high-end craftsmanship and excellent manual skills. Thanks to this field experience and to Nove’s traditional savoir-faire, I decided to embark on an individual pathway in mosaic production, with an immediately innovative approach, cooperating with people who did not come from the world of production, but were able to work on ideas and creativity in transversal fields, like architect Cristina Celestino.
What kind of products do you create?
We mostly create decorated mosaic pieces for ceramics and porcelain coating. We are also active in the field of artistic ceramics, especially for so-called traditional productions, but we are now working toward achieving unprecedented, research-based results by blending two-dimensional coating production and artistic ceramic production.
We consider ourselves as a “happy island” within the mosaic and tile landscape: we are among the very few who are still carrying forward a tradition of handmade tile production and decoration within the standardised, anonymous scenery of the coating sector.
The Plumage collection typifies the cooperation between our savoir-faire and Cristina Celestino’s creative vision and research. For this project we have produced ad-hoc moulds giving shape to three-dimensional tesserae, with bas-relief veining. The project has been realised both in porcelain (with a 100% Limoges mixture) and in ceramics. Porcelain is paste-dyed, while ceramics tesserae may be either monochromatic (with or without colour-changing lustres) or hand-decorated. Our point of reference rests on birds’ plumage: variety springs both from the plumage colours or from the multifarious combinations we can achieve.
Thus, the strong points of our work are enhanced by this project, allowing us to explore, within one single theme, an endless variety of decorations – even customised ones – and to achieve the most varied results by assembling different kinds of tesserae (as we did in the panels on display in the Fuorisalone). The chromatic and material vibrations from the tesserae turn this versatile, rich project into an actual interior design project.