Pietro Melandri Faience Miniature Italian Studio Ceramic Pottery Art Shoe Set

Pietro Melandri est né à Faenza le 25 juillet 1885.

After some time in Faenza, where he spent his time among illustrious artists, Melandri moved to southern Italy and then to Milan. 

Here he lived in poverty and had a productive artistic and intellectual period. 

He worked first as a decorator and then as a set designer. At the same time, he took evening classes in Brera. 

 Returning to Faenza after years of war and imprisonment, he took back up his work as a ceramist, first with Paolo Zoli and then with Francesco Nonni.

Thanks to the economic support of the Umberto Focaccia, an industrialist from Ravenna, who in 1922 bought for him the property that had been owned by the Minardi brothers, he started to work on his own.

Melandri survived everything, the economic crisis of 1929, the break with Focaccia, and conflict with Faenza’s ceramic and artistic milieu. 

From 1920 to 1940, he took part in major shows, exhibitions and competitions in Italy and abroad. He met with great success and awards wherever he went (such as awards won in Paris in 1925 and 1937, and the Faenza Prize, won for two consecutive years, in 1938 and 1939).

Nothing could stop him, not even the almost total destruction of his home and workshop when it was bombed in 1944.

Melandri kept working until he was 87 years old and was among the greatest ceramists in 20th-century Italy. He deftly combined excellent technique (his innovative use of glazes and the iridescence of his varnishes were often enough to mark his pieces as unmistakably his), a quite eclectic production, and a strong, persona.