Rina Menardi hand-made stoneware

Since 1980, Rina Menardi has been developing her research into the field of ceramics, personalising work techniques, exploring colour schemes, striving for neatness of shape. Through this work, she has been creating her first collection of living accessories, all hand-made stoneware pieces, always characterised by simple lines, inspired by nature, removed from the style of so many mass-produced items, and never limited to a single purpose, believing, as she does, that an object should not impose itself, but rather suggest visual and tactile sensations able to evoke our deepest emotions. Rina moulds the clay without ever feeling as a tout-court ceramist. She chooses baked clay because she senses in this material the possibility to express herself through gaining possession of some of nature’s secrets, understanding her laws, respecting her rules and limitations. The ever-personal research she conducts over the expressive potentialities of baked clay has always been accompanied by her growth as an individual. About herself, Rina says: “ Clay allows me to give a three-dimensional shape to the here- and-now ‘me’. It is a way of communicating with myself, and therefore with others. I simply strive to respect the natural surfacing of things that are already within us”. Rina Menardi’s collections are a fusion of art, design and craftsmanship, where chromatism, aesthetics and functionality converge in a synthesis of intuitions coming from everyday life and events, creating atmospheres that inspire serenity and pleasure.