The cittacotte are miniature copies of historical or monumental buildings of Palermo and other Italian cities made only in
terracotta
Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based ceramic glaze, unglazed or glazed ceramic where the pottery firing, fired body is porous.
In applied art, craft, construction, a ...
. The word ''cittacotte'' was invented by
Vincenzo Vizzari, and it is composed by the two terms: (city) and (baked), meaning they are miniatures made of fired
clay
Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4).
Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...
.
The monuments are reproduced in scale (1:180 and 1:350) and can vary in size from a minimum height of up to . The typology of monuments and buildings reproduced is varied: monumental city doors, churches, historical buildings, but also common buildings of the centre of the city.
Making the Cittacotte
The preparatory phase of a single cast is long and laborious: it consists in creating some clay prototypes which will be necessary to make their plaster casts. Each cast is made by photographic and metric surveys that allow the artist to take care also of the shrinkage coming from the evaporation during the modelling and the cooking phases. The result is a perfect handcrafted masterpiece in scale 1:350 or 1:180, exact in each single particular.
The cast or the casts, for more complex models, are used to give a first shape to the clay parts that, once sketched, can be modelled and finished by hand. The making of a medium complexity model like the Palermo's Porta Nuova can require six hours of intense manual labour. The firing takes about two hours. After that the artist can start the finishing, fully manually, and the polishing using a little wax film to enhance the appearance of the terracotta.
File:Making of Porta Nuova cittacotte - phase 1.jpg, Phase 1 - putting the clay in the casts
File:Making of Porta Nuova cittacotte - phase 2.jpg, Phase 2 - the first raw part of the model is ready
File:Making of Porta Nuova cittacotte - phase 3.jpg, Phase 3 - assembling all the parts of the model together
File:Making of Porta Nuova cittacotte - phase 4.jpg, Phase 4 - after the baking the terracotta is ready
File:Making of Porta Nuova cittacotte - phase 5.jpg, Phase 5 - finishing, polishing and waxing
File:Making of Porta Nuova cittacotte - phase 6.jpg, Phase 6 - the cittacotte miniature is ready
Vincenzo Vizzari
Vincenzo Vizzari is an architect from
Palermo
Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan ...
. Since 1993, he has been working as a full-time artist and artisan in his little workshop in Corso Vittorio Emanuele in
Palermo
Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan ...
. In his life he made a radical choice and that choice led him to specialize in the creation of cittacotte, finally joining his love for architecture together with his love for ''making'' in an artisan way.
[Schöner Wohnen, Mai 1997, p. 16]
Collecting
There is an emerging hobby devoted to collecting cittacotte due to some miniatures being made in limited editions. In addition, it is possible to realize large parts of Sicilian towns by putting together the reproductions of these buildings.
See also
*
Clay
Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4).
Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...
*
Clay modeling
Clay modeling (or clay model making) for automobile prototypes was first introduced in the 1930s by automobile designer Harley Earl, head of the General Motors styling studio (known initially as the Art and Color Section, and later as the Desig ...
*
Terracotta
Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based ceramic glaze, unglazed or glazed ceramic where the pottery firing, fired body is porous.
In applied art, craft, construction, a ...
References
{{reflist
External links
Cittacotte- Official website of the artist
- Japanese article about Vincenzo Vizzari's cittacotte
YouTube's Cittacotte channel- Videos of the artist while creating
Handicrafts
Crafts
Terracotta