The good old artisan tradition of Romagna

A region talks with its traditions: this is a fact. How many times, while visiting a town, you immediately look for the best local traditional restaurant or just for the local typical food or object? Artisans are the owners of the stories of a place. They know why a thing was invented, what its use was and why people did it in that way. And they are also those who are passing these traditions to the new generations.

The Tegge of Romagna

We met Maurizio Camilletti a couple of years ago, at the Artusiane, the event that every year gives life to the little town of Forlimpopoli. Maurizio is by now the only producer of the typical Tegge, a faience based plate, used by women to cook the poor bread of Romagna, the piadina. Maurizio lives at Montetiffi, a mountain near Sogliano. His house is also the place where he produces the tegge. Since centuries the hills of the surroundings mountains have been the ideal place to find the right mix of stones to produce the clay for the tegge. This ancient art was the starting point of Maurizio and Rossella, who left their work and decided to spend their life for this tradition. Now they travel through the region to sell them and teach their work.

Egidio Miserocchi and the art of imprinting tissues

At the beginning, it was just a blanket, a very nice one, to cover the best ox of the family during the Sant Antony animals blessing ceremony. But then, this way of decorating handmade tissues became very common in every house: linen, towels, tablecloths, curtains and many other things. The unique of this ancient technique is the use and creation of the colors (all coming from natural essences and handmade) and the wooden mold to imprint the tissue. Every imprinter has its own molds: some of them just reprise the old designs the grape leaf, the Caveia (a typical decoration for the chariots) or the weat ear. But most of them have developed their own personal collection of molds. So did Egidio Miserocchi, an artist more than an artisan. His products are the result of a passion and a strong creativity. The designs go over the tradition towards a new way of intending the Romagna typical imprinting technique.

From today, we will dedicate some of our blogs to special artisans of this area. Stay tuned!