Portrait of James Alessi The staircase, lit candles, summer evenings.
Majolica shine with a thousand reflections.
Blue. Enamel. Yellow. The imperfection of the surface.
Caltagirone is an extraordinary place. In
Square, City Hall, and on one side, the Gallery Sturzo curious example of twentieth-century architecture.
Nearby, in a narrow street, on a tiny square, his shop.
I met him by chance, years later interview.
James Alessi tells me: "Want to see my collection of ceramics?". Nothing traditional
says.
Art.
I have a sinking heart.
I hate contemporary ceramics.
agree.
The appointment is for tomorrow.
Before a visit to Mary Attanasio. His house is on a hill. The terrace is breathtaking.
back in town. Periphery. A building of gray concrete.
Insert a narrow staircase.
"They have seen a few," says James.
Twenty or thirty persons.
I would be elsewhere.
opens the door.
"Sit." Turns the
lights, and guide me along a corridor. And the door opens onto a wood tiles, up an aviary of owls on a sea of \u200b\u200bdomes, cathedrals and mosques, and synagogues. The green and red. The colonnades. The statues, and are not carved, but shaped, one by one, from the hands of a craftsman of genius.
Now he is in retreat, and I take a step forward, and kneel down to see the chaos that seems to many continents, from a different point of view.
The light is not enough. He opens the shutters, and the spring sun shines through and is refracted on the surface round the city of ceramics.
may be Venice or Constantinople, Sophia.
I watch those inventions, which are what they represent and more, and try to bring them to the status of objects.
An owl watches me with his hands in his pockets, his stomach protruding dignity.
There is something familiar in that look, in that posture. And
intuzione comes suddenly, and so strong, silent confirmation that I ask to James.
"Is that him?".
Leonardo Sciascia. In that animal
mythological, in that silence you see, feel, there is much more than a mere representation. Just as in some forms, apparently abstruse. And in fact full of other symmetries, unthinkable.
In what was a kitchen and is now a sort of lesser exposure, there are two men in uniform, posing in a frankly obscene. And is uniformly high.
James Alessi is a man split into two twins.
is the knowledge of tradition, and it is almost impossible to distinguish its vessels and its jars and its figures from the eighteenth century baroque which was Caltagirone furnace. Same spider, same vitrification, the same softness of the shapes and colors. Delicate proportions. Pastels and impeccable cooking.
And now, surprise. The sound of music never before heard. The breaking of the injury on a rock. James Alessi is also a great contemporary author. Caltagirone would like to bring her to Venice, Venice and criticizes his provincialism.
I know little about contemporary art, very little. And perhaps this it must be my initial suspicion.
I love history and mysteries.
Yet, in those forms, there is the same force of the volcano who rebuilt the city after the earthquake of 1693. The fire, which baked the pottery is the same.
James Alessi holed up in his laboratory, from time to time, and those thousands of experiments, seen by very few, are the fruit of his joints.
is intellectual, James Alessi. He knows the world and its contradictions.
I had to finish in Caltagirone, to find a garage, and a craftsman in a time when nobody knows anything about what he does.
Majolica shine with a thousand reflections.
Blue. Enamel. Yellow. The imperfection of the surface.
Caltagirone is an extraordinary place. In
Square, City Hall, and on one side, the Gallery Sturzo curious example of twentieth-century architecture.
Nearby, in a narrow street, on a tiny square, his shop.
I met him by chance, years later interview.
James Alessi tells me: "Want to see my collection of ceramics?". Nothing traditional
says.
Art.
I have a sinking heart.
I hate contemporary ceramics.
agree.
The appointment is for tomorrow.
Before a visit to Mary Attanasio. His house is on a hill. The terrace is breathtaking.
back in town. Periphery. A building of gray concrete.
Insert a narrow staircase.
"They have seen a few," says James.
Twenty or thirty persons.
I would be elsewhere.
opens the door.
"Sit." Turns the
lights, and guide me along a corridor. And the door opens onto a wood tiles, up an aviary of owls on a sea of \u200b\u200bdomes, cathedrals and mosques, and synagogues. The green and red. The colonnades. The statues, and are not carved, but shaped, one by one, from the hands of a craftsman of genius.
Now he is in retreat, and I take a step forward, and kneel down to see the chaos that seems to many continents, from a different point of view.
The light is not enough. He opens the shutters, and the spring sun shines through and is refracted on the surface round the city of ceramics.
may be Venice or Constantinople, Sophia.
I watch those inventions, which are what they represent and more, and try to bring them to the status of objects.
An owl watches me with his hands in his pockets, his stomach protruding dignity.
There is something familiar in that look, in that posture. And
intuzione comes suddenly, and so strong, silent confirmation that I ask to James.
"Is that him?".
Leonardo Sciascia. In that animal
mythological, in that silence you see, feel, there is much more than a mere representation. Just as in some forms, apparently abstruse. And in fact full of other symmetries, unthinkable.
In what was a kitchen and is now a sort of lesser exposure, there are two men in uniform, posing in a frankly obscene. And is uniformly high.
James Alessi is a man split into two twins.
is the knowledge of tradition, and it is almost impossible to distinguish its vessels and its jars and its figures from the eighteenth century baroque which was Caltagirone furnace. Same spider, same vitrification, the same softness of the shapes and colors. Delicate proportions. Pastels and impeccable cooking.
And now, surprise. The sound of music never before heard. The breaking of the injury on a rock. James Alessi is also a great contemporary author. Caltagirone would like to bring her to Venice, Venice and criticizes his provincialism.
I know little about contemporary art, very little. And perhaps this it must be my initial suspicion.
I love history and mysteries.
Yet, in those forms, there is the same force of the volcano who rebuilt the city after the earthquake of 1693. The fire, which baked the pottery is the same.
James Alessi holed up in his laboratory, from time to time, and those thousands of experiments, seen by very few, are the fruit of his joints.
is intellectual, James Alessi. He knows the world and its contradictions.
I had to finish in Caltagirone, to find a garage, and a craftsman in a time when nobody knows anything about what he does.
In Library has just arrived "James Alessi and ceramics. A long tradition for the future, "a precious book full of photographs of the author of the masterpieces of Caltagirone. His work is told from the writings of sixteen among archaeologists, artists, critics, journalists, managers, writers, scholars (Silvana Editoriale, 288 pages, 52 €).
my story.
three times, and yet ...
It happened three times and probably still would have happened in the city of the mountain that had a name he knew and was air instead of sulfur, lime and clay dough soft and rich. The first time
Caltagirone was reborn from mud that suddenly had the edict had come the other side of that sea which had accepted the island at the center and the center was still on the mountain.
Men with the cross and the sword was told that all the worshipers of Satan who lived in San Giuliano, and all those descended from worshipers, by line of father or mother, had to leave, and leave the earth what the earth only it was, and therefore his clothes, gold and parchment fell to the bottom of a well that was quickly sealed.
The houses were sold and the few furnishings ignited the fires of the devotions of others.
The men told the women to take a child only, and move towards the source of the sun, to Germany. As for them, they would take their other son, or any other, e avrebbero inseguito il sole fino alla sua morte, sul mare, verso il Garbo.
Se la donna e il figlio fossero morti, o fossero stati depredati, e resi schiavi e venduti, allora vi era ancora la speranza che loro, gli uomini, insieme agli altri figli, si salvassero, all'Impronunciabile piacendo.
Poiché le ricchezze dovevano esser lasciate alle loro spalle, essi conservarono quel poco d'oro che poteva esser dissimulato, tra le pieghe dei loro corpi, e si cucirono addosso dei cilindri di rame con le lettere e le frasi che un giorno li avrebbero condotti alla prima terra perduta. Una notte, ad uno, tra di loro, venne in sogno un vulcano, e la lava infuocata che ne fuoriusciva si stendeva sugli uomini, li ricopriva, e quando gli uomini crawled under the blanket of cold, now freed, to leave their mark, so that everyone could look at it and have their memory and the past.
He was named Shmuel, who used the time he was allowed to remain in the city of the mountain with the clay to mold the faces of men and women, and the books of God and the Law. Then it was time for Pesach, walked down the paths along the valley, until Maroglio, and the bed of the river laid the stones of clay, which bore the inscriptions, and the vessels which copied the faces of Yoshua, Robina, Iosep, Salomon, Alba.
who had bathed in the waters, would have their voices heard to pronounce the names of all who had to be silent.
happened again, two centuries later.
In churches, built over the temples, shaking of the angry God broke the signs of wealth, the devotion which had overtaken and obscured the light.
Houses of Lords and the miserable were also crushed. On the evening of the ninth day of 1693 and to noon on the eleventh day, in Caltagirone, for Occhiolà, Noto, Modica, from the bowels of the globe there was a cry of death, and the anger subsided, two years later.
dull moan of the earth, were added the cries of mothers and fathers and children, the cries and sighs and murmurs grew, and who had to lose someone, it lost forever. When the revenge of the Unknown finally ceased, the city of the mountain was bare of things and souls, and we had to start over again, as had already happened after the expulsion of the Jews, and the loss of doctors, pharmacists, the workshops, manuals.
In a dream, a monk with a long white beard, was a volcano, and the fiery lava that flowed, cools monster in the form of a chalice, crucifix, and tabernacle. The priest shook himself, he set out in the cold foggy night in the winter and there where 'clay was abundant, his principles to shape it like a tree, and sun, and children.
who saw him the next morning, he described black and white wet powder, among hundreds of trees, and only, and children, which seemed alive and about to bear fruit, light and tears of happiness. The city of Mount
grew of new homes and everyday objects were made of clay, rather than gold and silver, and tin, and copper, and wood. The dishes were of terra cotta, and so the glasses, and pottery, and churches, devotion had rekindled around dust hardened by water and fire, and all seemed right that this is the case: quia pulvis example, in pulverem reverteris. The city
provident to the present, today, and that Lent lasted for centuries.
happened again, just before the second millennium is close.
A low whistle heralded the flight of a griffin, and that grew to become whistle scream of Revelation, griffins and multiplied, to darken the sky and the earth began to tremble as the tales that the old soothsayer in the cracks of the surrounding walls are still intact.
eggs that griffins flung down their path, opens on the streets and houses, giving life to death, life and death.
The houses are made of fire and the roads were opened up in hell, and those mouths swallowing everything: the ruins, and men and animals.
danced without music.
The war that was young thief, is now put into the homes of fathers, plunder of misery. What had been converted from a God to another, and what had survived the wrath of the Most Merciful, was held up by man, this will end, that one will stand on a few stones.
None, this time, had more desire to rebuild homes and churches.
But it is said that he would return in a muffled hearing, or perhaps it was a blind man who had returned his sight, and that the person selected would raise an altar, said to be grateful for that miracle.
He walked the streets of the mountain and saw that he had not seen, and they were the children in the street, lifeless, or perhaps he felt that he had not heard, and they were the tears of their mothers.
seemed to be mad. He would have preferred to remain blind, or deaf.
In place of the altar, the man decided to raise a wall, where were the windows of his house and hide in the farthest room. He slept on straw escaped the fire, and the straw was still smelling of the mule that had held, and the dream was a volcano, and the fiery lava that flowed, had the sweet features of children and the serious ones of the mothers. Disheartened, the man decided he would withdraw back to its silence, to tell what he had
seen or heard.
In his hands, for generations, was the ability of the Shaper, and those thoughts, dreams and joyful and dark, patterned on the clay they collect at the source of each city's rebirth of the mountain, so that in future the man knew that the border was not to be exceeded already been exceeded, and the good was on this side, and not beyond that boundary, where there were only pain and death.
Caltagirone was reborn from mud that suddenly had the edict had come the other side of that sea which had accepted the island at the center and the center was still on the mountain.
Men with the cross and the sword was told that all the worshipers of Satan who lived in San Giuliano, and all those descended from worshipers, by line of father or mother, had to leave, and leave the earth what the earth only it was, and therefore his clothes, gold and parchment fell to the bottom of a well that was quickly sealed.
The houses were sold and the few furnishings ignited the fires of the devotions of others.
The men told the women to take a child only, and move towards the source of the sun, to Germany. As for them, they would take their other son, or any other, e avrebbero inseguito il sole fino alla sua morte, sul mare, verso il Garbo.
Se la donna e il figlio fossero morti, o fossero stati depredati, e resi schiavi e venduti, allora vi era ancora la speranza che loro, gli uomini, insieme agli altri figli, si salvassero, all'Impronunciabile piacendo.
Poiché le ricchezze dovevano esser lasciate alle loro spalle, essi conservarono quel poco d'oro che poteva esser dissimulato, tra le pieghe dei loro corpi, e si cucirono addosso dei cilindri di rame con le lettere e le frasi che un giorno li avrebbero condotti alla prima terra perduta. Una notte, ad uno, tra di loro, venne in sogno un vulcano, e la lava infuocata che ne fuoriusciva si stendeva sugli uomini, li ricopriva, e quando gli uomini crawled under the blanket of cold, now freed, to leave their mark, so that everyone could look at it and have their memory and the past.
He was named Shmuel, who used the time he was allowed to remain in the city of the mountain with the clay to mold the faces of men and women, and the books of God and the Law. Then it was time for Pesach, walked down the paths along the valley, until Maroglio, and the bed of the river laid the stones of clay, which bore the inscriptions, and the vessels which copied the faces of Yoshua, Robina, Iosep, Salomon, Alba.
who had bathed in the waters, would have their voices heard to pronounce the names of all who had to be silent.
happened again, two centuries later.
In churches, built over the temples, shaking of the angry God broke the signs of wealth, the devotion which had overtaken and obscured the light.
Houses of Lords and the miserable were also crushed. On the evening of the ninth day of 1693 and to noon on the eleventh day, in Caltagirone, for Occhiolà, Noto, Modica, from the bowels of the globe there was a cry of death, and the anger subsided, two years later.
dull moan of the earth, were added the cries of mothers and fathers and children, the cries and sighs and murmurs grew, and who had to lose someone, it lost forever. When the revenge of the Unknown finally ceased, the city of the mountain was bare of things and souls, and we had to start over again, as had already happened after the expulsion of the Jews, and the loss of doctors, pharmacists, the workshops, manuals.
In a dream, a monk with a long white beard, was a volcano, and the fiery lava that flowed, cools monster in the form of a chalice, crucifix, and tabernacle. The priest shook himself, he set out in the cold foggy night in the winter and there where 'clay was abundant, his principles to shape it like a tree, and sun, and children.
who saw him the next morning, he described black and white wet powder, among hundreds of trees, and only, and children, which seemed alive and about to bear fruit, light and tears of happiness. The city of Mount
grew of new homes and everyday objects were made of clay, rather than gold and silver, and tin, and copper, and wood. The dishes were of terra cotta, and so the glasses, and pottery, and churches, devotion had rekindled around dust hardened by water and fire, and all seemed right that this is the case: quia pulvis example, in pulverem reverteris. The city
provident to the present, today, and that Lent lasted for centuries.
happened again, just before the second millennium is close.
A low whistle heralded the flight of a griffin, and that grew to become whistle scream of Revelation, griffins and multiplied, to darken the sky and the earth began to tremble as the tales that the old soothsayer in the cracks of the surrounding walls are still intact.
eggs that griffins flung down their path, opens on the streets and houses, giving life to death, life and death.
The houses are made of fire and the roads were opened up in hell, and those mouths swallowing everything: the ruins, and men and animals.
danced without music.
The war that was young thief, is now put into the homes of fathers, plunder of misery. What had been converted from a God to another, and what had survived the wrath of the Most Merciful, was held up by man, this will end, that one will stand on a few stones.
None, this time, had more desire to rebuild homes and churches.
But it is said that he would return in a muffled hearing, or perhaps it was a blind man who had returned his sight, and that the person selected would raise an altar, said to be grateful for that miracle.
He walked the streets of the mountain and saw that he had not seen, and they were the children in the street, lifeless, or perhaps he felt that he had not heard, and they were the tears of their mothers.
seemed to be mad. He would have preferred to remain blind, or deaf.
In place of the altar, the man decided to raise a wall, where were the windows of his house and hide in the farthest room. He slept on straw escaped the fire, and the straw was still smelling of the mule that had held, and the dream was a volcano, and the fiery lava that flowed, had the sweet features of children and the serious ones of the mothers. Disheartened, the man decided he would withdraw back to its silence, to tell what he had
seen or heard.
In his hands, for generations, was the ability of the Shaper, and those thoughts, dreams and joyful and dark, patterned on the clay they collect at the source of each city's rebirth of the mountain, so that in future the man knew that the border was not to be exceeded already been exceeded, and the good was on this side, and not beyond that boundary, where there were only pain and death.
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