When passing through the historic town of Este, in Veneto, one might catch sight of a table set with many plates full of freshly boiled asparagus, a handful of grilled sardines with half a lemon, ready to be squeezed, two boiled potatoes, some fleshy, unctuous olives, a wicker basket overflowing with fresh fruit and a dish of handmade chocolates. What is this, a feast? Sadly, not. It’s a trick of the eye. During the second half of the 18th century, at the tail end of the Venetian Republic, a time of carpe diem decadence, these tongue-in-cheek ceramic creations were placed on tables and buffets to confound and amuse guests at dinner parties.
‘The original moulds for these divertissements come from our historic archive,’ says Giovanni Battista Fadigati, owner and CEO of Este Ceramiche, one of the oldest factories of its kind in Italy. When his grandfather Giovanni Battista Giorgini relaunched this trompe-l’oeil collection soon after buying the factory in 1955, it became an international success. Judging by sales, it still is.
Located at the foot of the Euganean hills, some 30 kilometres south of Padua, Este has plenty of water and clay-rich land, making it an ideal environment to produce ceramics. It has deep roots, too. ‘This town is even more ancient than Rome and so is its pottery tradition,’ says Mr Fadigati, referring to some of the earthenware in the town’s archaeological museum that harks back to the Neolithic population of around 4500BC. Of the half a dozen or so factories that flourished here in the 18th century, Este Ceramiche is the only one still in business. Its headquarters, in a large red brick building abutting the town’s Medieval walls, are unchanged since its 1780s foundation. The Bisatto canal, which linked the settlement and its productions to Venice, flows on one side of the building, just a few minutes’ walk from both the Duomo and the Villa Albrizzi.
The works owes its initial success to the talent and inventiveness of Girolamo Franchini (1727–1808), Este’s original master ceramicist. Under his guidance, and with the help of French modeller Jean-Pierre Varion, who introduced the formula for making porcelain to Italy, Este’s ceramic industry flourished. The focus was creating light-hearted artefacts that, like the trompe-l’oeil collection, made people happy during the last mirth-filled decades of the Venetian Republic. These included elaborate and perfectly executed statuettes depicting carnival figures and bucolic scenes. ‘Craftsmanship aside, our ceramics,’ says publicity manager Isabelle Fadigati, ‘are known for the lightness and resilience of their clay and hue, a particularly pure tone of white.’
The quality of its production and the timeless appeal of its archive (with its never-fading catalogue of religious paraphernalia) have allowed Este Ceramiche to survive, albeit barely, through the death of the Venetian Republic, the Napoleonic wars, the industrial revolution and two world wars. By the mid-1950s, all that remained of this factory, aside from a glorious reputation and its historic archive, was a shell of a building, its business prospects lying in broken shards.
Enter the scene Giovanni Battista Giorgini. The current owner’s grandfather was a cultivated Florentine aristocrat and entrepreneur who, in 1951, had organised at his villa the first international fashion show that launched Italian haute couture on the international scene. During an excursion in Este, he walked past this factory and asked to see inside. ‘What he found there [in the archive],’ says Mr Fadigati, ‘blew his mind.’
Count Giorgini relaunched the factory by sparking the interest of the American buyers he worked with and bringing in new designers. One of them was Van Day Truex, widely regarded, Mr Fadigati explains, as the father of 20th-century American design. In his long reign as design director at Tiffany & Co, he worked alongside some of the century’s greatest designers. United by a similar aesthetic sensibility, Giorgini and Truex saw an invaluable source of inspiration in the thousands of moulds stored in the warehouse. They worked to bring back the works of Franchini and Varion through a delightful collection of faience that forms a significant chapter in Italian ceramics history.
Giovanni Battista Fadigati was still at university in his native Florence when he took up the baton of Este Ceramiche after his forebear’s death in 1971. The decision changed his plans and he moved to the town, but he has no regrets. ‘I didn’t want to lose all my grandfather’s work,’ he explains. Under his leadership, and working with Isabelle, his daughter, the pottery continues to thrive and bring joy through its graceful, often surprising creations. It’s a tribute to experience and singular craftmanship, no doubt, and a gentle reminder to hold on to one essential quality no matter what: a sense of humour.
For more information, visit esteceramiche.com
A version of this article originally appears in the April 2025 issue of The World of Interiors. Sign up for our weekly newsletter, and be the first to receive exclusive stories like this one, direct to your inbox
