Giú in Lab.

Ceramics, Architecture and Design
Laboratory.

The territory. Inspired by the context.

The necessity to obtain ceramic objects for furnishing and for everyday use, required by our job about architects that recover and renovate old farmhouses and trulli to be used as summer residences or Ho.Re.Ca. activities, in the design and construction of local and contemporary residences, has led us to imagine, draw and self-produce objects that speak a contemporary local language that does not disdain tradition.

We think that ceramics, in addition to representing itself and the intellectual depth of the craftpeople who produced it, must evoke a story of the places and the “living” peoples of those who live there.

Bruno Munari, master of Italian design, said that it is impossible to ignore the observation of things, shapes, objects of everyday life to achieve the beauty of a right form to use.

For us everything started by the observation and narration of the shapes and nature of the territory in which we live, its landscapes of sea and land, ancient and forgotten practices and objects, which still remain in some split of the Apulian memory, reinterpreting them, enhancing the their formal character (textures, drawings, shapes) to make them objects for everyday use and for furnishing.

Thus, the territories of the land of Egnazia, its symbols, human landscapes, living environments, characterized by canyons (karst grooves of the land, natural ecological corridors, rock culture) and millennial olive trees, fortified farms, hypogean oil mills , the arboreal essences, the gardens that go up to a few steps from the sea, where small beaches alternate, used as natural shelters of goiters used for small fishing with nets and for the capture of hedgehogs and octopuses, are become the inspiring elements of our projects.

Through the forms, the symbols, the essences of earth and sea and the colors of this land, our ceramics become “ceramiche narranti” i.e. speaking ceramics.

Clay meets ricotta and cheese pot in various shapes and sizes, lend themselves together with their textures to give shape to the “TerRicottine“, glasses, cups, oven terrines, baskets, lampshades for lamps.

Baskets used by fishermen give shape and texture to the “Tiella col cappello“, the pan in refractory baking clay, for the preparation of the typical Bari’s dish “potatoes, rice and mussels”.

We have impressed the grandmothers’ crochet doilies on our clays, turning those embroideries into dishes, centerpieces, coasters, ceramic lamps. The pomegranates of the messapia, are imprinted through the real fruits on our clays, like the fig leaves, the strawberry trees, the twigs and the fruits of olive trees, the capers, the flowers and many other essences fossilized forever in the ceramics of plates, trays, coasters of the “Terra d’Egnazia” project.

The “Fiore della Vita” is a universal symbol that also belongs to this land, we find it adorning portals and balustrades of ancient churches and its design characterizes the bas-relief textures of dishes, coasters, incense burners.

And then the fishes, the starfish and the corals that adorn the lines of the “Mediterrae” dishes, the “Hellofish”, our friendly “scacciaguai” in all of the GiùInLab colors.