Three Layer Cake

Per la versione in italiano, vedi link a destra 

Licia Martelli’s first trade fair was in April (2006) at Pittiliving in via Tortona, during the Salone del Mobile.  The black and white ceramic tableware stood out, almost as a caricature of tableware, begging to be touched in order to verify that it was actually real.  Although it was her first time exhibiting at the fair, Licia isn’t new to the world of design, and magazines have featured her ceramics work for many years.

 
Licia was born in London, but raised in Italy.  She studied architecture, specializing in landscape architecture, but out of personal curiosity, she began to work with clay to form objects.  Her mastery of the technique has resulted in a line of freeform, playful ceramics designed to introduce an element of fun to tabletops and gardens.  Her collections range from the one-off handmade pieces, to a study in making the ‘handmade’ in a small serial production.  Her first collection, Lilli Primavera, includes a teapot which has been made part of the Teapot Collection in the Norfolk Museum's Decorative Arts collection.  The success of the teapot stimulated Licia to create a ‘traveling’ concept within Italy, through which the teapot is produced in limited edition with a traditional decoration from each Italian region.  Only 20 pieces are made of each decoration.
 
Although she feels somewhat limited, externally, by the difficulty of penetrating the contact network of ‘high-end design’ producers in Italy, this hasn’t hindered bringing her own production to market.  It drove her to create her own workshop and studio so that she could self-produce her ceramics, and of course follow her architecture clients, for whom one of Licia's ceramic or natura one-off sculptures is often the finishing touch.  At the same time, she also designs for others, for example in the fall she will begin designing a new tableware collection for Cyrus Company.
 
Having mastered ceramics with her own trademark style, she would now like to move into plastics.  How nice it would be to see her designs in a new medium!
 

Do you consider yourself a designer or an architect?           

Definitely an architect.  I have a renaissance vision of the architect.  Leonardo Da Vinci, when he was commissioned by families, like the Sforza family, designed everything from the building down to the smallest detail.  It’s somewhat of an eclectic idea, but I think if you look back over time you’ll see that all of the great architects did a type of personal trial of their abilities by applying their design abilities outside of the mere ‘structural’ task.  At the end of the day, the concept of designing is still the same, uses solids, spaces, volumes, and so forth.  Obviously, you can’t be an expert at everything, at which point you put together a small team who can handle various aspects, but fundamentally, yes, I consider myself an architect.
 

Your design philosophy:  What you want each person who sees one of your projects or purchases one of your creations to know about you? 

I don’t know what I’d like for people to know about me, actually.  Perhaps that I have a heightened sense of the environment.  A relationship with nature that is fundamental in my approach to my work, most of all for my architectural projects.  Often it happens that I am asked to project restoration of houses and these kinds of projects are always a sort of different way to approach my sensibility about nature.  I use roof gardens a lot, or a part of the house to build upon.  And this is the same of course in my ceramics because I think they are very ironic objects, ‘fantasy-like’.  I think when someone lives in a city like Milan, the view of a garden is a very special gift.  My ceramics are designed to be in these gardens, these city gardens.  So they try to give a special way in which you can drink a coca-cola, or juice or tea.  They have been compared to Alice in Wonderland’s birthday table.
 

Which professional obstacle has been the hardest for you to overcome?

The most difficult has been having contacts with the companies which produce designs/products, because in Italy it is still a very difficult process to get someone within a company to view your work.  Either someone actually takes you and introduces you to the decision-maker, or you’re completely cut out.  This is the reason that I have my own production for my ceramics.
 

How is the work environment in Italy for women in your field?

Honestly, there isn’t much difference between men and women either in the architecture field or design.  At least in my experience I haven’t noticed any discrimination.  Maybe I had problems many years ago, but I attribute that to the fact that I was young.  I think that if you know your stuff, people deal with you on a very professional level.

What’s the creative atmosphere like in Italy?

Hmmmm…  It’s really hard to answer this question because I am a little out of the loop because since I have started working on my own, I don’t get into the mix anymore.  I go to exhibits, of course, but not the inaugurations.  My colleagues in the creative fields say they are tired and worn out.  It is tiring.  Let’s put it this way--  there are a lot of good people out there, but they are having problems bringing their projects to term. 

What about creative stimuli? 

If you mean creative atmosphere in that sense, I’d say it’s pretty dead.  I just got back from Lisbon and even though it’s a tiny city, it was full of all sorts of art exhibits, amateur and not, really beautiful, and great.  The city was alive.  In Milan, these days, people produce either money or ideas, but not much more.  I’m one of the lone producers (laugh).  There isn’t an “East London” type area in Italy anymore that you can go to for creative energy, like the old neighborhoods of artisans.  Oddly enough though, I’ll be opening up a new studio in September on the outskirts of Milan in an old historical suburb.  For some strange reason, there are still a lot of artisans’ shops here, and the neighborhood still has the feel of an ancient village, even though we’re ten minutes from the subway stop.  This is quite rare.  These artisans have left Milan proper because the costs of the city have driven them away. 

How do you work through your ideas from beginning to end?  Does it start with a sketch?  A model or photograph?

Both sketch and model.  My ideas come from working with my hands.  If you’re working on something, you start to create and one thing flows from the next.  In other situations, like the one in which you are commissioned, it works differently for me.  Right now, I am doing a line of tableware accessories for Cyrus and Company.  So the product development is more rational.  I have to study their past production and their brand image and come up with something that is recognizable as theirs. 

When I’m doing my own things, I’m obviously much freer.  And anyway, I started ceramics because I noticed that it is an Italian tradition, but a tradition which hasn’t changed in the history of Italy.  Ceramics are produced everywhere here in the same way with the same decorations, and they‘ve been that way forever.  Once I learned the technique, I realized that the material had greater potential.  So I started with the base material, a material which in and of itself is very cheap, and I enriched it.  I was fascinated by this contrast of rich and poor, in other words, that it was possible to start with such an inexpensive product and render it rich.  The end product is an object that doesn’t just go on the country table, but also on the most refined tables.
 

What are you working on now?  What would you like to work on?  What’s next?

Swimming pools.  I’m designing swimming pools for some clients for whom I designed a garden last year.  The project for Cyrus & Company.  My big dream is to succeed in getting someone to produce my ceramic designs in plastic, another inexpensive material! 

What motivates you?
The spirit of things.

What food/dessert best describes your design style?  What would you like it to be in five years?  Grandma Duck’s cakes (Donald Duck’s grandmother).  They were all extravagant and covered in nice colored icing!  In five years I’d like to retire and live off of interest income.  Or be a gardener surrounded by my plants!!!  That’s what I’d like… 

The first thing you notice in a restaurant?
It depends.  If it’s a pizzeria, I don’t pay any attention to anything except maybe the oven.  If it’s a classier restaurant, I notice how the table it set, the flatware.

Eating what food brings back the best memories?
Polenta, maybe.  It reminds me of my childhood.  And well, I don’t know…Indonesian food reminds me of Amsterdam!

The last piece of art you fell in love with?
The work of Andy Goldworthy, land artist.  

Your favorite flea market find/best bargain.  Where is it now?
Lately, I’m kind of fed up with flea markets.  But I did once pick up a beautiful piece of Ceramics from Capodimonte.  I also often buy San Marino ceramics from the 1950s and 1960s. I have a small collection.  You can only find this type of ceramics there in San Marino, where they made these simple, essential ceramics but with a very particular glaze and finish.  Or else I look for strange shape

No home is complete without…
Without books, I’d say! 

You’ll always pick up the magazine if _________________ is on the cover?
Gardens or architecture.  And also cooking, I’d say.  I love cooking magazines.

Magazine you can’t live without?
None, actually.  But if I have to say one, I’d say cooking magazines like La Cucina Italiana. 

You’re most proud of your collection of…
Ceramics and plants. 

Italian version on next page.