COOPERATIVA SOCIALE LA SORGENTE
The artisan workshops of the cooperative La Sorgente were established in 2018 within the day centers Orchidea and Myosotis to offer a work experience to people with disabilities. Over time, the staff organizing the workshops received guidance from numerous local artisans to identify the most suitable techniques for each participant’s individual characteristics.
The products are unique, handmade pieces crafted from wood and clay, in keeping with the traditions of the Aosta Valley. The types of wood used include walnut, chestnut, Swiss pine, maple, linden, oak, and larch.
Animals such as roosters or tatà shaped like horses, ibexes, and cows have, over the years, found a place at regional fairs alongside brightly colored ceramic tableware.
BIANCA AND THE WILD CHILD – LUCIANI Ilaria
Ilaria approached ceramics after having explored other fields and undergone different educational experiences.
First of all, her degree in Linguistic Mediation allowed her to approach the Greek language and the Greek world in general with ease: here she found a second home, the experiences she had in Crete, in particular, became a source of inspiration for her.
Ilaria then attended NABA, New Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, and opened a fashion boutique, deepening her artistic and creative side.
In 2020, she finally experimented with working with clay, a material that allowed her to reconnect with nature. Bianca And The Wild Child, her project, was born from this: a bohemian life, at a slow pace, immersed in nature, celebrating small things and the beauty of simplicity.
MINEL – MALAVOLTI Anna Maria
She began her training at a workshop in Genoa where she learnt the basic techniques for manufacturing leather bags and accessories. In 1975 she started her own business by opening a small shop in Aosta that was successful and attracted the attention of many fans of handmade handicrafts. Her production consists not only of bags of any size and style, but also wallets, purses, belts and key chains. Even today, Anna Maria continues her work with the same passion of the past, seeking new stimuli in the confrontation with fellow artisans and experimenting with new creations: in recent years she dedicated herself to the combination of leather and other materials to create increasingly personalized and unique items.
LAB5 ATELIER – FIORE Silvia
Born in Genoa but valdostan by choice, Silvia graduated in Architecture and then began a learning path in the field of handmade ceramics, experimenting with combinations of different materials and techniques. Silvia’s intent is to create a bridge between the three architectural virtues of an object (utility, solidity and aesthetics) and expressive authenticity, making herself a shaper of emotions and drawing inspiration from nature. Ceramics is a tool to give substance to the cues that nature whispers to her, season after season. This is how her creations come to life, welcoming natural elements such as plants and flowers of seasons imprinted on ceramics, in a perpetual still image that everyone can feel, experience and use.
COCOTATA – GAL Elena
Coco Tata was born from Elena Gal’s passion for ceramics. Her production mainly consists of furnishing accessories such as lamps, squares, hanging writings, but also little animals. The latter in particular play a relevant role for Coco Tata and draw inspiration precisely from the “tatà,” toys on wheels of the Aosta Valley tradition, from which the company takes its name.
Elena uses clays and earthenware, “poor” but fundamental materials to fully express the spirit of Coco Tata.
The artifacts, strictly one-of-a-kind pieces, that is, modeled one by one and without the use of molds, are generally enriched with inserts and complements in old or worn wood and decorated with a characteristic red heart.
TORCHIO Marina
After finishing her university studies in Florence, Marina Torchio discovered a strong interest in ceramics that led her to attend for two years the workshop of the ceramist Renzo Igne in Castellamonte. Thanks to this experience, she identifies the working of the land as the most appropriate technique to express her artistic vocation: she prefers in fact stonewares and earth with a rough material impact, that she models in shapes with robust volumes and surfaces never carefully finished.
As a sensitive artist instinctively, she creates in her artworks a perfect balance of content and form. In fact, she says of herself: “What I love in my work is the possibility to create objects without prefixing any scheme. There is never a project and its faithful realization. It is the knowledge of the matter that allows me to make thought coincide with action in the same moment”.
PANOZZO Paolo
He approached the art of working with ceramics by attending the Regional Art Courses in Aosta and obtained his high school diploma at the Castellamonte Art Institute “Felice Faccio.” Today he devotes himself almost exclusively to the craft by making small ceramic objects inspired by the animal world such as chickens, cows or ibexes, or the universe of children such as rocking horses. Especially with regard to the latter, Paolo loves to combine different materials giving life to his characteristic wooden squares with ceramic inserts. His creations are strictly handmade, colored and glazed.
FITTA FAVRE FERRO BATTUTO – FAVRE Michel
Following a sports career and a master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Michel decided to devote himself to the knowledge that has been passed down in his family for more than seven generations: the arts of blacksmithing and wrought iron. His works are the result of continuous research that tends to revitalize a technical and stylistic link with tradition in an experimental key. He places at the center of his work the concept that wrought iron should take forms that capture all possible harmonic traits in irregularity, both when reproducing natural subjects and in the conception of abstract lines and workings. For him, iron is inorganic matter that, through the fire of the forge, the use of tools and ideas, comes to life through the fusion of functionality and narrative, creating ever new forms.