07 - Casina Bucci, Via Cavour

In a small showcase, without any connection with the surrounding, you can find the display of the ceramics of Franco Bucci, one of the most important designers and ceramists of the Italian twentieth century. His works are present in several other places in the center of Pesaro, but his workshop, beautiful to visit, is in Strada Romagna 143. Here the artisans have collected the master's legacy and produce the "Bucci Ceramics".

Between the end of the 1950s and the early 1960s, Franco Bucci was present in numerous exhibitions both in Italy and abroad and, in 1960, won a silver medal at the Milan Triennale; he was called as a designer by the ceramic industry Villeroy & Boch and in 1972 he obtained official recognition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, he returned to Italy and agreed to work as a designer of the "Gruppo Ceramiche Iris".

In 1961 he founded, together with other partners, including Nanni Valentini himself, the "Laboratorio Pesaro" factory, of which he became artistic director in 1966, where he created a vast range of objects whose main stylistic connotation is purity and essentiality of the shape, combined with an absolute lack of color.

In the 1980s he worked in his studio in Pesaro on Strada Romagna.

In 1987 he began to experiment with the production of large monolithic ceramic slabs which led him to obtain, thanks to a mixture he patented, slabs up to 1000 mm. 2 x 1.

In 1995 he sold the company, remaining its artistic director until 1998, the year in which he opened a ceramic laboratory where he created unique and small-series pieces.

In the following years he began research on porcelain which led him in 2000 to patent another ceramic material highly resistant to fire and thermal shock

Among the collaborators of the last years of production we remember Loreno Sguanci.

Franco Bucci died in Pesaro in 2002 after having created the Terracottas Museum in Fratterosa, a village with an ancient ceramic tradition, in the province of Pesaro.