What role do the territory and the material play in Rometti's identity?
Rometti is deeply Umbrian. In almost a hundred years, entire generations of families have worked within the manufactory, passing down skills, gestures, and sensibilities that cannot be learned from books. At the same time, our relationship with the territory is still closely tied to the material we use: clay from an ancient Etruscan quarry, bathed by the banks of the Tiber. Our territory has also taught us the value of time, patience, and quality. Umbria is a land where making has always been closely linked to culture and art, and we are a natural expression of that. At the same time, we don't see ourselves as custodians of an unchanging tradition; we believe the best way to honor it is to let it evolve — we continue to use historic techniques while constantly putting them in dialogue with the language of contemporary design.
What are the main sources of inspiration for your collections?
Inspiration is born from the encounter between memory and contemporaneity. On one hand there is our history: the legacy left by great artists such as Corrado Cagli and Dante Baldelli, the iconic atmospheric stripes, the Nero Fratta black, the research into color that has made Rometti recognizable around the world. On the other hand there are contemporary languages — art, architecture, fashion, and of course the ongoing exchange with designers from different cultures. The Umbrian landscape, too, continues to exert a strong influence: the colors of the earth, the light, the hills, the atmospheres.
Which processes and elements best express Rometti's artisanal knowledge, and why do these specifically define your identity?
The potter's wheel is certainly one of the techniques that most represents Rometti. Every form is born from the hands of the ceramicist, and it is precisely this direct relationship with the clay that gives each piece a unique identity. Alongside the shaping of the form, another fundamental element is decoration, which for us is not a simple finishing touch but an integral part of the design.
A significant example is the collection created in 2018 with Ugo La Pietra, or the collaboration with Louis Bottero, the young French street artist, for the 2026 collection.
How do you choose the designers and collaborators you work with, and how, in practice, is the dialogue between their vision and your savoir-faire built?
We choose people who share the same idea of beauty that we do. In this process, the role of our artistic director, Jean-Christophe Clair, has been and continues to be fundamental. He is the one who builds the bridge between the designer's or artist's vision and our savoir-faire, translating an idea into a project that can be concretely realized in ceramic — without compromising its expressive force, and at the same time valuing the skills of our craftspeople. For us every collaboration must be a dialogue between the designer's vision and artisanal experience. It is from this balance that the best projects are born.
Could you tell us about some of the collaborations you consider most representative of this balance?
We have had the honor of working with personalities from very different creative worlds, and it is precisely this cross-pollination that represents one of Rometti's riches. With Rossy De Palma, a dialogue was born between art, personality, and irony. Her ability to turn her own identity into expressive language translated into objects with a strong scenic presence, perfectly in tune with the character of our manufactory. The collaboration with Roberto Capucci was instead a natural encounter between haute couture and high craftsmanship. His sculptural forms, sense of volume, and research into color found in ceramic a surprising expressive medium. With Ugo La Pietra, a master of Italian design, we developed a reflection on the relationship between object, architecture, and domestic space. The collaboration with Kenzo Takada represented an extraordinary encounter between Japanese aesthetic sensibility and Italian artisanal culture, giving rise to collections marked by great formal balance and extraordinary decorative richness.
The project "Le Mani d'Oro" — born from the shared vision of Fondazione Cologni dei Mestieri d'Arte and The Place of Wonders, published by Librì progetti educativi — places the transmission of artisanal knowledge at its center. Rometti's story is included among the ten exemplary stories aimed at younger generations. What does this theme mean for Rometti, and what role do you see for young people in craftsmanship today?
The "Le Mani d'Oro" project is particularly meaningful because it tells something that too often remains invisible: the value of the people and the skills behind objects. When you look at a finished work, you tend to see only the result, while behind it lies a heritage of gestures, knowledge, and sensibility built over decades of experience.
I believe that today artisanal knowledge is one of the most precious cultural assets we have. It's not just about knowing how to make things, but also a way of thinking about work: with patience, responsibility, precision, and respect for the material. If we lose these skills, we also lose an important part of our cultural identity.
For this reason, the transmission of knowledge has been one of our goals since I joined the company, and the Rometti Prize — an international project dedicated to young artists and designers, launched in 2013 — shows how much this theme matters to us. To young people I would say that craftsmanship does not belong to the past. On the contrary, it represents one of the most contemporary languages that exist. In a world dominated by uniformity and speed, uniqueness, time, and quality have become increasingly sought-after values.
