Lorenzo Vignoli, artist and amphora maker
Website: https://www.vignolisculture.com/
While I was visiting Fattoria Le Masse in Chianti Classico I caught up with artist Lorenzo Vignoli, who was visiting. He’s made some terracotta amphorae for wine, which are quite striking because they are painted.
Lorenzo’s art mainly focuses on marble, but he’s also used clay for art, and says he’s always felt a relationship with the material he uses.
He began making wine vessels because he has good friends in the world of wine. His friends are biodynamic types, and they kept asking him to make amphorae. So he started discovering the qualities of all kinds of clay, trying to find the right sort to use.
He began with local clay, ‘but I disovered it wasn’t right for what I wanted,’ he says. He thought about adding silica to the clay, something that vessel maker Tava do. But his friends were biodynamic and wanted the vessels to be clay, not a manufactured substance.
The problem with most clay is that you can cook it to around 950-1000 °C, and then it breaks or cracks. So this was his big challenge: how could he work with clay, but be able to reach firing temperatures to make vessels suitable for wine. The higher the firing temperature, the less permeable the clay is to oxygen. At lower temperatures, the wine will seep through it.
So Lorenzo started to work with a master of ceramics called Ivo in Pietrasanta, in the coastal part of Tuscany. This town specializes in sculpture and ceramics. He wanted to find clay that could resist being fired at higher temperatures.
Ivo the artisan found a man for him in Vicenza in the north of Italy who had the clay he wanted. This was lake clay with some pulverized quartz in it, and in 2023 Lorenzo made five amphorae, which he fired at 1200 °C. These are 500 litres, but he says it is no problem to make them bigger.
‘It’s not just about the quality of the clay,’ says Lorenzo, although he says it’s important to get to this higher temperature for wine vessels. ‘When I touch it, I smell it, I know it’s correct. I want a mix of masculine and feminine energy.
The first time he built from the bottom using a coil pot technology, first 3.5 cm, then 2.5, then 2. He aims at a thickness of 2.5 cm. But he has also used a mould.
‘I want to do something that is “earth”,’ says Lorenzo. ‘The amphorae need to breathe, but not too much.’
