Product Details:

• Italian Buon Ricordo Dish

• Material: Ceramic

• Area: Italy

• Period: 1964-1989

• Dimensions: Width 23cm X Height 3cm

• All products have undergone cleaning and when needed slight restoration aimed at maintaining the condition in which they are found. The aim of All”Origine is to stay as much as possible true to its original state.

• Background: Buon Ricordo dishes were born as collectibles. Their story begins in 1962 with a handful of restaurant owners establishing the “Buon Ricordo” association. Every restaurant had a commemorative dish designed portraying their most famous recipe. Year after year more restaurants joined and collecting these dishes literally became a mania for many Italians, mostly between the late 60’s through to the late 80’s. The production of Buon Ricordo plates still continues to this day, each are individually hand-decorated by the craftsmen of the Ceramica Artistica Solimene company in Vietri sul Mare, a family-run business on the Amalfi coast whose members have been potters for untold generations. Their cheerfully colourful naïve style captures the essence of each restaurant’s local specialty (members may change their option every five years), and the decoration is embellished with references to the restaurant, its local territory and products. The rim of each plate bears the name of the restaurant and the town or village it is in. The plates are made from local clay from a quarry in Ogliara, a few kilometers from Vietri. The raw clay is worked and washed in water, then sieved and filtered to a soft, fairly dry consistency without any bubbles of air. The worked clay is used to make the plates, that are then dried, and biscuit fired for the first time at 100°C. After biscuit firing, they receive their first coat of slip and are decorated by hand by skilled craftsmen using a carbon “dusting” technique similar to that once used for Renaissance fresco painting. Once the plates have been decorated, they are glazed and fired for a second time to fix their vivid colours. They are completely safe to use for eating because the materials all comply with strict regulations governing the production of tableware.

All’Origne is the leading Italian specialist in European objects of the XX century ranging from artisanal craft objects for common household use, to rural and industrial artifacts. All the objects that they select are original and for the vast majority datable between 1940’s and 1960’s. With a profound love for old objects, they have a widespread collective network of pickers who spend the year traveling all around Europe sourcing products. Background research is done on every typology of object collected and that knowledge is shared and spread as much as possible.

“ Old objects resonate with me much more than new ones. I wouldn’t say I have any kind of prejudice towards new objects, they are just more silent to me. Old things make me feel connected with my childhood, they bring my memory back to my grandparents’ house. I’ve really been surrounded by old stuff my whole life. I see them as more unique, more special. And when they break you can mend them if you know how and the patch will blend in, while with new stuff it doesn’t work. A mend will stick out like a sore thumb. See I’m wearing secondhand clothes and (though it may disgust you) yes, my shoes are second hand too. I’m not saying I don’t like your white sneakers though; I would totally buy a pair like yours if they were provided to me with the right degree of wear and tear. [...] I do value elegance a lot. A certain kind of elegance at least. Not the freshly-ironed-dress kind of elegance. I would not know how to define it, but that particular type of elegance which I aspire to is something that can and should be applied to all the aspects a person’s life: in the way of speaking, of handling situations, of dressing, moving, styling one’s home and beyond!” — All’Origine’s art director Corina Jucan