There are places where a craft survives as heritage, and others where it still forms part of everyday life. Deruta belongs to the latter.
Perched on a hill overlooking the Umbrian countryside, the town has been shaped by ceramics for centuries. Local clay, abundant wood for firing kilns, and its position along historic trade routes helped establish Deruta as one of Italy's most important centres of maiolica production from the Renaissance onwards. Walk through its streets today and ceramics remain everywhere—not only in workshops and galleries, but on street signs, building façades, fountains, and shop windows. Many homes still have their own kilns, a reminder that in Deruta, ceramics have long been made as much in family homes as in dedicated workshops. The town speaks through clay.
Like many places with a long artistic tradition, Deruta has developed a visual language of its own. Among its most enduring motifs is the peacock feather, a pattern that has appeared for generations and continues to be reinterpreted by successive makers. What survives is not simply a design, but a way of seeing.
Our search eventually led us to Deruta Placens, where we met ceramicist Annalisa Mordenti. Her workshop and gallery felt less like a showroom than an extension of the town itself: shelves filled with hand-painted maiolica, brushes laid aside between pieces, and decades of accumulated knowledge visible in every corner.
As we walked through the collection, two pieces immediately stood apart to us. Their decoration felt unusually precise, the rhythm of the peacock feather motif carrying across each surface with remarkable confidence. We asked Annalisa about them.
She smiled. We had chosen the only pieces that had not been made by her. They were the work of her daughter, Camilla Boccali.
Camilla belongs to a new generation of ceramicists working within Deruta's long-established traditions. Having grown up surrounded by the craft, her work reflects a familiarity that feels natural rather than studied—an assured hand shaped by repetition, observation, and instinct. Within a shared decorative language, what distinguishes her work is its clarity and precision, carrying a centuries-old motif forward with renewed focus.
Annalisa's pride was unmistakable. She told us how moved she was that, without any introduction or prompting, we had instinctively gravitated towards her daughter's work. Then the conversation shifted.
Despite her evident talent, Camilla hopes to become a lawyer rather than continue as a ceramicist.
It was a surprisingly moving moment. Not because one path is more valuable than the other, but because it revealed something easy to overlook when visiting places like Deruta. Traditions are not sustained by history alone. They survive because each generation decides whether to continue them.
We left Deruta with two beautiful pieces by Camilla, but also with a deeper appreciation for the fragile continuity behind them. Every object carries the marks of the hands that made it. Sometimes it also carries the uncertainty of whether those hands will choose to make the next one.
