Blu Ponti | Gio Ponti + Ceramica Francesco De Maio

Between 1960 and 1962, Gio Ponti - architect, designer and Italian essayist, among the greatest of the twentieth century - created a collection of blue and white ceramic tiles for the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Sorrento. Italian manufacturer Ceramica Francesco De Maio has now brought back into production
 the famous “Blu Ponti” collection.

Gio Ponti’s project for the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Sorrento involved the entire building. In particular, the series of blue-and-white ceramic decorations created in collaboration with Ceramica D’Agostino, transformed a hundred rooms, together with the lobby, the reception area, the bar and the restaurant. The decorations consisted of “mathematical and geometric” combinations of a complete series of 27 patterns which, then as now, were reproduced by hand on 20 x 20 cm maiolica tiles.
Gio Ponti loved visiting the ex- Ceramica D’Agostino where he studied the renewal of the ceramic language and, emphasizing the local context through colors and geometric and naturalistic lines, created the famous “Blu Ponti” tiles.
A faithful reproduction of the original 27 maiolica tiles, together with 5 decorations that were never used for the hotel  have now been made for the first time by the master decorators of Ceramica Francesco De Maio, which in 1990 took over the former Ceramica D’Agostino, now Antiche Fornaci D’Agostino. As Ponti wrote about the Sorrento project, “give a person a square, measuring twenty by twenty and, over the centuries – even though everyone has indulged their whims with no end of patterns – there’ll always be room for a new design, for your design. There will never be a last design.”

Sorces: Ceramica Francesco De Maio | Triennale | Archiproducts

“Impari le cose fatte con le mani. Nulla che non sia prima nelle mani.

Impari anche, l’Architetto, dall’artigiano come si ama il mestiere:

com’è bello farlo per farlo.

L’arte per l’arte è lì,

non è in una forma di arte senza contenuto,

ma è nella felicità di farla.”

Gio Ponti