Mazzotti 120

The Giuseppe Mazzotti ceramics factory, founded in Albisola in 1903 by Joseph Bausin Mazzotti, celebrates its 120th anniversary.
The manufacture was among the protagonists of the renewal of craftsmanship and art, through his work he has brought the most important militant personalities in the international art scene to the banks of the Sansobbia, making Albisola the world capital of ceramics during the twentieth century.
A cultural and productive metamorphosis that, for the first time, is told jointly by Giovanni Rossello and Tullio Mazzotti, fourth generation of the family and current owners of Ceramiche Mazzotti and Fabbrica Giuseppe Mazzotti 1903, the two companies that continue the activity of the initial company founded by their great-grandfather.

In this volume, through the analysis of production catalogues, of the shapes and styles of terracotta objects and their evolution in these 120 years, technological changes are analysed, artistic and social experiences experienced by the manufacture which led it to expand to other locations giving life to ceramic workshops such as the Pierluca factory, born as a branch of Mazzotti in the fifties, reopened in the eighties by Clara Biagi e Bepi Mazzotti and today successfully directed by Dario Bevilacqua.

On the occasion of this important anniversary, the Mazzottis wanted to trace their history also from the point of view of the many craftsmen who attended their workshops to train or perfect the technique. In the MGA we have always tried to transfer skills to our collaborators to strengthen and grow the ceramic craft system of the territory e, exactly for this reason, in the following pages there is a long list of factories born thanks to the entrepreneurial initiative of former collaborators of the Mazzottis. Some of these are still active today and their owners, Giovanni Poggi, Marcello Mannuzza, Marco Tortarolo and Guido Garbarino, were asked to give direct testimony about their experience as employees e, subsequently, by entrepreneurs, tracing a precise portrait of the Mazzotti factory in different periods of activity. But not only, also Serena Salino, nephew of the sculptor Eliseo, returns to readers a fond memory of a work experience that led his grandfather to attend the MGA for over thirty years.

As evidence of the fact that the Mazzotti family has always sought comparison with those involved in ceramics at a national and international level, important contributions are signed by illustrious friends of Giovanni and Tullio, as well as experts in the ceramic sector: Eduardo Alamaro, Enzo Biffi Gentili, Rolando Giovannini and Davide Servadei (Cat ceramics, Faenza).