Interview with Riccardo Monachesi: A Master reflecting on Italian Handmade Ceramics

2 days ago
4 min read

In this conversation, Amalia Di Lanno speaks with Riccardo Monachesi, one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Italian ceramics. Here, he reflects on tradition and the evolving role of Italian handmade ceramics in a world saturated with mass production.

Riccardo Monachesi working with clay in his ceramic studio, surrounded by tools, glazes, and sculptural works. — Riccardo Monachesi in his studio in Rome

Italy has a profound ceramic heritage — how do you see yourself within this long tradition of Italian handmade ceramics?

In reality, Italy has not only a long history in the field of ceramics — as one could also say of Greece or other Mediterranean cultures — but over the centuries it has managed to evolve and reinvent itself continuously. From the Romans to today, there have been no real ruptures, only transformations as varied as the many small states that once made up the peninsula.

For this reason, one cannot feel part of one single, exclusive tradition. With one’s own sensitivity, one draws from the most well-known or distinctive ceramic cultures. “Tradition” has left us the types of clay we use, glazes prepared as they were in the 1500s, and firing temperatures around 950°C. These characteristics form the cultural toolkit with which we can — or must — create our work today.

They are the elements that, depending on one’s taste or knowledge, allow us to “cook” new dishes using the ingredients this country offers. This is how I situate myself within the world of Italian handmade ceramics: not by reproducing the past, but by using its techniques to speak a contemporary language.

Wings 2019. Installation and detail of gold wing, semi-refractory clay with gold applied in the third firing

Poppies 2018. Installation and detail, semi-refractory clay and glaze. along with handcrafted iron support

In a world dominated by mass production, what value do you believe ceramic art has today?

If this question had been asked 15 or 20 years ago, it would have caused total discouragement. At that time, Design had been confused with mass production, and speaking about “handmade” had a nostalgic, almost pitiful tone. Manual work was confined to a kind of hippy world or associated with a return to simplicity that contemporary culture was not ready to accept.

But intense massification created its own rejection. People began to feel that anything “made in series” lacked a soul — it failed to express what the creator wanted to communicate. Today, Italian handmade ceramics have regained their dignity. They are no longer considered a “minor art,” but a medium equal to any other for producing art or functional objects. This shift has allowed ceramics to return to the centre of contemporary artistic and design dialogue.

Riccardo Monachesi, Allegorie, 2025, glazed ceramic. Ph.Fabio Santinelli

What connection exists in your works between presence — not reflected — and the sense of estrangement that follows?

Speaking about the relationship between my works and estrangement goes quite deep. I do not like seeing myself in the mirror or appearing. But I do care — and here the satisfaction is total — that my works remain recognisable and identifiable within the crowd.

This tension between visibility and invisibility runs through many of my pieces, especially the ones that reference the mirror. Instead of reflecting the viewer, they invite an inward gaze — a common thread in my approach to contemporary Italian ceramics.

Is the idea of being “Attesi” — the awaited ones — a sign of a presence that already exists and is simply waiting to be truly seen?

I believe the Attesi are among my most personal works. This idea of waiting — especially at my age — involves deep feelings and fears. I use a baroque, colourful, gilded language to mask the truth.

The emotional dimension of these pieces is important to me. Through form and glaze, I try to give shape to a presence that is not yet visible but already felt — one of the recurring themes in my sculptural vocabulary within Italian handmade ceramics.

Riccardo Monachesi, Attesi, 2025, glazed ceramic. Ph.Giuseppe Grossi

In your "Allegorie", mirrors no longer reflect the viewer. What do we hide in the reflection, and what do we refuse to see in the otherness denied by a blind mirror?

The impossibility of seeing oneself forces us to internalise what we would have liked to see reflected. It becomes a form of introspection, a search.

In Allegorie, the mirror does not return the self, but it opens the possibility of reflection in another sense — a recurring motif in my work with glazed surfaces and sculptural forms. This is where Italian artisanal ceramics become a psychological tool: the blind surface invites the viewer to confront what is hidden.

About the artist

Born and raised in Rome, Riccardo Monachesi has been using clay as a medium for art since 1977.

After an apprenticeship at Nino Caruso's studio, he graduated in Architecture in 1980 and realized that the only meaningful way to design was to "design emotion," and this poetics informed his artistic practice. In 1981, he began exhibiting his work in galleries, with a show on the Baroque in Calcata presented by Paolo Portoghesi. In 1994, an exhibition at Studio Bocchi, presented by Walter Veltroni, "cleared" ceramics as a material linked to the world of craftsmanship, returning it to its place as an art form. This was followed by a solo exhibition at the Italian Cultural Institute in Vienna in 2009; in 2011, the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna acquired and placed 20 ceramics created with Elisa Montessori at the Museo Boncompagni Ludovisi; This was followed in 2014 by a solo exhibition, "Terraemota," for the Municipality of Rome, presented by Maurizio Calvesi, at the Museo delle Mura, and in 2015 by a group show at the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna. Also in 2015, he created a site-specific work for the Archaeological Museum of Lipari and two other works at the Italian Embassy in Santiago, Chile, as part of an artist residency. In 2017, the Ceramics Museum of Viterbo and the Ceramics Museum of Civita Castellana dedicated a solo exhibition to him, "Addendi," curated by Francesco Paolo del Re, featuring both historic and previously unpublished works.

A V A N T C R A F T