Impruneta clay has been used to handcraft everyday domestic earthenware objects since Etruscan times and its use is documented in Medieval times. Since then, the production technique, handed down from generation to generation, has been the main craft-industry of Impruneta and its surroundings. It is here that in the 1960s Raffaele Zago took over the Antica Fornace Ricceri, winner of a prestigious prize at the Florence Exhibition in 1887, and established the Enzo Zago Terrecotte.
The business has adapted to the demands of an ever-expanding market, which includes Europe, the Americas and Japan. It still takes enormous pride in its production, which ranges from orci, or oil jars, vases, fountains statues for garden decoration, to floor tiles. The same attention is given to each object, out of respect for the great art of terracotta making. Zago’s objects have a unique rose color and are easily recognized by their trademark seal, a crowned shield with a helmet and plumes.
The pottery is still made either by hand or using plaster casts; all objects are finished manually by skilled craftsmen, then placed in the drying room for approximately 60 hours, before being fired in the kiln at 1000 Celsius, after which they are immersed in water to be tempered. The use of the so-called “blue earth”, rich in galestro limestone, makes these objects almost waterproof therefore resistant to very low temperatures.
The attention to detail, the refined design and , the excellent quality of the prime materials have contributed to the success of Enzo Zago’s production on the market. Zago’s “creations” appear in prestigious locations such as Rome’s Villa Borghese and on the Costa Smeralda, where an important hotel chain has bought his latest masterpiece, an enormous vase measuring 2.7 meters in diameter.
You can find Zago at Via Poggensi, 19 – 50027 Strada in Chianti (FI) Phone: +39 055 858 7253 or 8587106 email: info@enzozago.it
Website: www.enzozago.it
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