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# 69 • OCTOBER 5 , 2015
other Italian factories.
from silk or iron.
Today, the Besio laboratory from 1842 is still active. In 2010, on an initiative by the late Marco Levi,
the last owner of Besio, a
grand Ceramics Museum
was opened in the historic palazzo Fauzone in the
Mondovì Piazza (www.museoceramicamondovi.it).
The clay is then left to rest
and dry again. Finally, it
is moved into oval pits,
where workers knead it
with bare feet, adding if
necessary, water or sand.
When the right degree of
firmness is reached, workers make clay balls with
their hands and hurl them
against a wall. The wall features protruding bricks,
which support the clay, so
that it became firm and
dry. The collecting is done
by beating it repeatedly
with a square shaped iron
rod. It is then divided into
slabs and handed over
to the ceramicists. In the
twentieth century, the material (clays from different
areas) is ground by stone
and passed into “caroline”,
namely engine mills with
horizontal cylinders.
The production cycle
In the nineteenth century,
the clay was collected
from quarries during the
summer and transported
to the damper areas of the
factory, where it was left to
mature for the winter. The
following spring, the earth
is mixed together with a
hoe in a special rounded
pit (“tampa”), diluted with
water and sieved several times with tools made
42 | WE THE ITALIANS
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The mixture is dried in horizontal presses with discs
made from tissue, then left
to mature in wet canvas
sacks. When it takes on
the desired mass and softness, it is placed in a plug
mill from which it is drawn
out as loaves. The slabs
were cut with a piece of
wire (in the twentieth century using a special wire
cutters) into round sheets. The apprentice would
take a clay disc and let it
fall with force on a plaster
model, which in turn was
secured to a cast iron bell
in a lathe.
The ceramicists at this
point turns the wheel,
lowering a metal arm (the
“receiver”) that holds a
tool (the “stick”) at one
end with the form of the
desired plate's radius, and
moulds the piece. Instead,