This past January 15 the Museo Rubboli was inaugurated in Gualdo Tadino. Installed in the old nineteenth-century premises of the workshop, it houses an important collection of Rubboli lustre maiolica ranging from 1878 to the 1960s, together with some significant works by other important ceramic manufactories of the same period.
The museum itinerary comprises four rooms, corresponding to the production phases of the manufactory, and the room of the muffle kilns, old kilns dating back to 1884.

First room
PAOLO RUBBOLI (1838-1890) – The shaping room

The Rubboli manufactory is wholly identifiable with gold and ruby lustre maiolica, a practice it introduced to Gualdo Tadino from the 1870s.
Paolo Rubboli, the founder of this tradition, was born in the province of Pesaro, at Fiorenzuola di Focara, on December 15, 1838. His presence in Gualdo Tadino is documented from 1875, as he was already active in those years at the workshop established by the wealthy and cultivated Piedmontese antiquarian Marcello Galli-Dunn, who had chosen Gualdo Tadino to produce Maioliche Artistiche uso Urbino Faenza e Gubbio. The factory found its seat in the premises of the former convent of San Francesco.
Here in 1878, once the experience with Galli-Dunn had come to an end, Paolo Rubboli set up a workshop of his own, assisted by his wife Daria Vecchi. Together they produced fine maiolica with lustre in the manner of Mastro Giorgio, historicist in type, in line with an attitude fairly widespread in the artistic craftsmanship of the nineteenth century. Indeed, from the copying of Renaissance originals they would move on to a freer inspiration, without however renouncing the figurative and ornamental repertoire of their models.
From the premises of San Francesco the workshop was moved in 1883 to the former convent of San Nicolò, before being definitively installed, in the rooms of this museum, the following year. Paolo Rubboli died here on May 11, 1890, one year after the death of his first son Alessandro, aged twenty-four, cited in the documents as a painter.
This section also houses some examples of lustre maiolica produced by the Ginori manufactory, by Cesare Miliani and by Achille Farina.

Second room
DARIA VECCHI RUBBOLI (1852-1929) – The molding room

After the death of Paolo Rubboli, his wife Daria, born in Fabriano on October 24, 1852, took over the direction of the Rubboli firm for about thirty years, at a moment when the level of production was stable and the quality of the lustre maiolica had reached considerable technical accomplishment. Proof of this is the Medaglia d’Oro per la Ceramica Iridata conferred on her at the Esposizione Generale Umbra of 1899.
In the pieces dating from this period certain distinctive features can be traced, such as the rather diluted pale blue dominant of the ground, which often takes on an intense blue tone on the rims of the plates. Although the decorative intent is central and the compositional complexity evident, the general effect is one of formal rigor and of a stylistic sobriety of classical flavor, amply reflected in the pure and essential interpretation of early historicism. Daria died on February 22, 1929, when for nine years already the Rubboli firm had been part of the Società Ceramica Umbra, whose funeral notices record her epithet of Maestra del Terzo Fuoco.
This section also houses some examples of lustre maiolica produced by Ulisse Cantagalli, William de Morgan and Galileo Chini.

Third room
SOCIETA’ CERAMICA UMBRA (1920-1931) – The kiln room

The Rubboli manufactory entered the Società Ceramica Umbra in July 1920, when Daria’s sons Lorenzo (1884-1943) and Alberto (1888-1975) had already been active in the firm for more than a decade. In the same year a branch was also opened in Gubbio; it was short-lived, closing in 1923.
The production of these years is among the most original in the long artistic course of the Rubboli firm, for its attempt at stylistic emancipation from the tradition of historicism, by then devoid of the vitality and ideal tension it had possessed in the nineteenth century.
The new stylistic signature and the different organizational arrangement were due, respectively, to Aldo Ajò as artist and to Giuseppe Baduel as entrepreneur, responsible for an unprecedented direction in lustre maiolica that succeeded in expanding surprisingly the decorative and expressive possibilities of the third firing.
The Rubboli manufactory left the SCU on May 16, 1931, owing to a marked crisis in the ceramics sector that affected many Italian manufactories in the early 1930s. Thus closed a brief but important chapter in the history of the Rubboli workshop, which would continue to operate under the direction of the brothers Lorenzo and Alberto.
This section also displays a work by the Salamandra of Perugia attributed to Davide Fabbri.

Fourth room
THE RUBBOLI BROTHERS AND THEIR HEIRS – The glazing room

After the closure of the Società Ceramica Umbra in 1931, Lorenzo and Alberto continued production as the firm Fratelli Rubboli until 1934, although the legal division dates from 1936.
Thus arose the separate firms Lorenzo Rubboli and Alberto Rubboli, which went on producing in the wake of the experience of the SCU. The gold and ruby lustre pieces of this period are of excellent technical quality, while remaining tied to tradition. In a few isolated but well-executed attempts, a connection with the new artistic tendencies can be seen, with a free and virtuoso use of the lustre technique.
After Lorenzo’s death in 1943 it was his three daughters, Livia, Gina and Ivana, who carried the tradition forward until 1955, the year in which the Lorenzo Rubboli firm was closed.
Alberto, for his part, continued to work until 1975, the year of his death, passing the baton to his daughters Laura and Edda and then to his grandchildren, who carried on until 2002. Emblematic, for understanding the stylistic orientation of these years, is the Piatto del Centenario, on whose verso Alberto Rubboli wrote the motto in ruby lustre Immotus in Motu: motionless in motion.
The scant presence of works by Alberto Rubboli in the collection, compared with the more substantial number of those by Lorenzo, is due to the character of the collection created by Maurizio Tittarelli Rubboli, heir of Lorenzo through his mother Gina.
This section displays some works made by Alan Caiger-Smith before the closure of his Aldermaston workshop.

Fifth room
THE MUFFLE KILNS – The reverberation room

Paolo Rubboli rebuilt the muffle kilns for the third firing in 1884, when the Rubboli manufactory moved to this site after operating in the former convents of San Francesco and San Nicolò. The “muffles”, designed to obtain the gold and ruby lustres in a third firing by burning bundles of broom, are a faithful copy of those illustrated by Cipriano Piccolpasso in his celebrated treatise Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio of 1558. According to the English scholar Alan Caiger-Smith, considered the leading expert on the lustre technique, “the Rubboli muffle kiln, designed by Paolo Rubboli around 1870, is a modified version of that of Mastro Giorgio of Gubbio. It is probably the only example of this type of lustre kiln left in the world”.
A fascinating museum itinerary, then, which, unwinding through almost 150 years of Umbrian history, gives the visitor an exact perception of what the great tradition of Italian ceramics must have been between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Associazione Culturale Rubboli, based in Gualdo Tadino, was founded in 2007 at the wish of Maurizio Tittarelli Rubboli, great-grandson of the founder, and Marinella Caputo, art historian, with the cultural aim of promoting and protecting the lustre ceramic technique in the tradition of Mastro Giorgio, according to the canons described by Cipriano Piccolpasso in 1558 in his work Li Tre Libri dell’Arte del Vasaio.