A CLAY networking story

CLAY partners have visited Ceramiche Rometti during the project kick off meeting in Umbria Region, Italy (June 2018).

One year later, CTCV (Technological center for ceramics and glass, CLAY Portuguese partner) spread the call for participants of the Rometti competition and Luis Alvaro was selected to take part in the Workshop in Manifattura with his project Table shelf.

The Rometti competition, now in its sixth edition, aims to reward all projects that make an original contribution to the ancient art of ceramics. The Manufacture Rometti has been producing ceramics in Umbertide (PG) since 1927 and from the very beginning has collaborated with young artists, such as Corrado Cagli, Dante Baldelli and Mario Di Giacomo, students of the Rome Academy of Fine Arts, who were all given the opportunity to try their hand at producing ceramics at Rometti, creating masterpieces of applied art. During its long and uninterrupted history, the Manufacture has collaborated with wellknown and highly regarded artists and designers, both Italian and foreign, including, in recent years, Ambrogio Pozzi, Liliane Lijn, Chantal Thomass and Ugo La Pietra. The Manufacture’s aim in setting up the Award is to confirm the central role played by young people in its mission and to encourage original and innovative experimentation in the area of Art-Design, as seen in the recent series of décor products. The competition is sponsored by Ceramiche Rometti in collaboration with the Municipality of Umbertide and is open to the design Institutes and Academies of Fine Arts.

Rometti contest: http://www.rometti.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/BANDO-2019-ENG-.pdf

CLAY team is proud to spread the news of this example of networking, that will lead a Portuguese ceramist to one of the Italian ceramic excellence companies.

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Álvaro is 25 years old and he's a student at the Escola Superior de Arte e Design, in Caldas da Rainha (ESAD.CR), in the last year of the course of Product Design - Ceramic and Glass. He started to work with ceramics at CENCAL, a training center for the ceramic industry, and from there he entered the ESAD while keeping doing several workshops at CENCAL.

In 2018 he travelled to Wroclaw, in Poland, where he attended The Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design, as a part of the Erasmus Program. There he had the opportunity to have contact with the polish artistic ceramics scene.

Álvaro likes to work with ceramics, both functional and artistic, and to create and explore the possibilities of the material. This ranges from formal experiments with the object's shape to the decoration and painting. He prefers to create things with his hands and to leave a creator's mark on the objects.