Il Museo della Ceramica di Montelupo. The Ceramics Museum of Montelupo. Storia, tecnologia, collezioni. History, technology, collections

The Ceramics Museum of Montelupo Fiorentino derives from the excavations that have been carried out in the old town centre since 1973, when rehabilitation works brought to light a large water well that after being abandoned had been filled up with a vast quantity of firing waste from the nearby kilns. From 24 May 2008 Montelupo will be able to boast a new Ceramics Museum, extending over a surface area of 2,500 metres with a collection of more than 1000 ceramics exemplars. This volume is not intended to be a catalogue of the Montelupo Ceramics Museum in the traditional sense, but rather a publication that addresses the history of Montelupo as a whole, with a large section devoted to the technology and organisation of work in the workshops and kilns from the Middle Ages up to the end of the Modern Age.
Finally, an extensive descriptive section is devoted to the most important types of ceramic ware produced over the span of five centuries. The author, Fausto Berti, has been the director of the Montelupo museum since 1982, and has to his credit an extensive series of specialist publications, including the work in five volumes Storia della ceramica di Montelupo and an important catalogue on the Capolavori della maiolica rinascimentale; moreover, in 2004 he also published an edition of one of the most complete ceramic formularies in Italy, I segreti di fornace by Dionigi Marmi.
Contents: The historical-environmental framework. Population, the castle and the unforeseen evolution of a florentine "walled land" in the XIII and XIV centuries - Montelupo and ceramics production in pre industrial Italy - The production of ceramics: technology, methodology and organization of the workshops in Montelupo from XIV to XVIII century - The Museum of Ceramics. Short description of the exhibition areas - Types of ceramic production in Montelupo