Italy Panorama

Rocco

Basilicata

Rocco Gallicchio is a soft-spoken man.  His eyes flit embarrassedly when paid a compliment and his hands seem to have permanently taken on the dusty-white hue of the clay that they are immersed in daily.

Rocco is the remaining artisan of ceramics in a town once brimming with them.  He ardently carries on, hoping to revive the fires of the dormant kilns and renew Calvello’s once-glorious reputation as a center of southern Italy’s ceramic trade.

Calvello lies in a high valley in the middle of Basilicata, a mountainous, overlooked region wedged between Puglia and Calabria.  The town is crowned by a castle and skirted with alpine peaks.  Since the Middle Ages, ceramics constituted a mainstay of Calvello’s economy, the craft purportedly transported here by Benedictine monks who established a kiln.  The Calvello artisans developed their own unique style that is still employed by the purist Rocco.

Rocco does everything by hand.  He collects the clay from a nearby source, which he keeps secret.  He throws the clay entirely by hand, molding and twisting and braiding it into lovely, rustic objects.  Everything is created according to traditional methods and styles.  He gathers minerals, roots, and berries to make the paints he uses.  He mixes up his own glaze.

The bird is a recurring theme, just as it has been for centuries in Calvello.  Rocco refuses mass production methods, preferring that each piece have the natural, slight variations that are inevitable in handmade products.  His pitchers, plates, espresso demitasse cups, lamps and tiles speak of Old World quality, artisan pride, and rustic charm.

He is the lone craftsman but he labors on, hoping to interest some of Calvello’s youth into the trade, a hard sell when they’re being lured to factories and tech jobs in the northern part of the peninsula.  Finding markets for his wares is a constant struggle as well; marketing efforts for a small, artisan workshop are difficult and costly.

Yet he carries on, collecting his clay, mixing his paints, and hand-forming his designs, ensuring that, at least for now, Calvello’s history of ceramic-making remains alive.