Serafino Ferraro

Ceramist · Sicily to Vallauris · Foam, Iron and Crystal Glazes

Serafino Ferraro was a Sicilian-born potter who spent his working life in Vallauris, the pottery town in the hills above Cannes. Collectors know him best for his metallic crystalline glazes, small vases and soliflores on which blue, ochre and yellow crystals spread across the surface like frost on a window. Before the crystals, though, there was stoneware: heavy thrown forms, grey-white and iron glazes, impressed and embossed surfaces. Our ewer, incised Serafino on the shoulder beside the handle, belongs to that earlier and rougher register.

A Sicilian in a Pottery Town

Vallauris made cooking pots for centuries. The railway's arrival in the late nineteenth century turned its small workshops into factories, and in the twentieth century, as metal pans replaced earthenware, the town's potters turned increasingly to art ceramics. Picasso's arrival in the late 1940s made Vallauris famous, and through the 1950s artists and architects converged on it. Sicilians were part of that story well before Ferraro: Jean Gerbino, a Sicilian master potter naturalized French in 1928, built his reputation there with vessels inlaid in mosaics of colored clays.

Ferraro was born in Sicily in 1939; one dealer gives 1940. The published record does not say when he crossed to France, but by the 1960s he was working in Vallauris in his own studio, making both sculpture and decorative pottery.

The Stoneware Years

Ferraro's early production looks nothing like the crystalline work that made his name. A small table lamp sold at the Paul Bert Serpette market in Paris carries a grey-white glaze with embossed Greek friezes, which the dealer describes as typical of his production of the 1960s. A large white vase with a Greek frieze is stamped Ferraro Vallauris. A thick stoneware pitcher dated to the 1970s carries his handwritten signature, and its dealer remarks that it is of a completely different register from the crystal glazes.

Our ewer sits squarely in that stoneware world: an inverted cone body under a white foam glaze worked into impressed squares, set against a shoulder, neck and handle left in matte iron oxide that has fired to the color and texture of rusted metal. It is the Vallauris idiom of the 1960s and early 1970s, sculptural forms and lava and foam glazes rather than painted tableware, made by a potter who knew exactly where one glaze should stop and the next begin.

Growing Crystals

Crystalline glaze is one of the hardest effects in ceramics to control. The glaze is loaded with zinc and colored with metal oxides such as cobalt or titanium, and the crystals form only if the kiln is cooled slowly and held at the right temperature for the right length of time. Too fast and the glaze stays glassy; too long and the crystals run together. A 1stDibs dealer credits Ferraro with mastering the crystallization of metals on the surface of his pottery better than anyone else, and his surviving pieces bear the claim out: pebble-shaped soliflores in blue and ochre, small stoneware vases with striking blue and yellow crystals, and a set of four vases dated to about the 1990s with pearly reflections. These are the pieces most often catalogued under his name today.

Decades in Vallauris

Ferraro exhibited in Vallauris for decades. One dealer writes that his work was shown alongside Picasso's and describes the two as close friends; we have not been able to confirm the friendship and record it here as a dealer's account. What is clear is that the studio was a family one. His son Jose worked beside him, and together they carried on the tradition of the Vallauris potters. Serafino Ferraro died in 2017.

Why Ferraro Matters

Ferraro belongs to the second generation of Vallauris, the potters who arrived after the town was already famous and had to find a voice of their own beside Picasso, Capron and Portanier. He found two: a heavy, textured stoneware that reads as sculpture, and a crystal glaze practice demanding enough that few studios attempted it. A signed piece from the stoneware years is the rarer find, and it shows the hand behind the better known crystal work at its most direct.

A Life in the Record

1939

Born in Sicily; one dealer gives 1940.

1960s

Working in Vallauris in his own studio: textured stoneware, grey-white glazes and embossed Greek friezes.

c. 1960–1975

Foam-glaze and iron-oxide stoneware, including our ewer, incised Serafino beside the handle.

1970s

Hand-signed stoneware pitchers in the same heavy register.

Later years

Known above all for metallic crystalline glazes; a set of four crystal-glazed vases is dated c. 1990s.

Decades

Exhibits in Vallauris; his son Jose works beside him in the studio.

2017

Dies; the studio's work is carried on by his son Jose.

Ferraro's crystal glazes are the pieces collectors know. This ewer comes from the rougher Vallauris of foam and iron, and it shows a potter who could make a pot look as if it had come off a foundry floor, then finish the line between two glazes as clean as a ruled edge.

Viridian Eclection, Reno

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Works by Serafino Ferraro come to the Eclection one at a time. If you own a piece by Serafino Ferraro, or have photographs, catalogues or papers connected with his Vallauris studio, we would like to hear from you.

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Incised on the shoulder beside the handle · Serafino

Reading the Signature

Signed Serafino

Serafino

Our ewer is signed Serafino in cursive on the shoulder, just beside the root of the handle. The name was cut into the clay with a point while it was still soft, before the pot was fired: the iron oxide of the shoulder glaze pooled into the strokes and fired red-brown inside the line, and the edges of the cut are glazed over. A later scratch through fired glaze could not look like that.

Published Ferraro pieces are most often engraved Ferraro on the underside; a set of four crystal-glazed vases and a small blue-and-yellow crystal vase are both signed that way, a large Greek-frieze vase is stamped Ferraro Vallauris, and a 1970s stoneware pitcher carries his handwritten signature. A first name alone, high on the body, is less common in the record, so we catalogue the ewer as attributed to Serafino Ferraro. The base has not yet been photographed; if it carries Ferraro or Vallauris, the attribution will be upgraded.

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In the Collection

Works by Serafino Ferraro

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Vases

Vallauris Foam Glaze Stoneware Ewer, Signed Serafino Ferr...

$1,200.00

Foam glaze over iron, impressed squares

The Vallauris Surface

Foam, Iron and a Clean Edge

Foam over iron, c. 1960–1975

The lower body of the ewer was impressed all over with a pattern of small squares, glazed dark with iron and then covered in a thick white foam glaze. In the kiln the white crawled and beaded over the ridges while the dark glaze pooled and glittered in the hollows, so the surface reads at once as stone, bark and porcelain. Foam and lava glazes of this kind were the signature of the Vallauris studios of the 1960s.

Above it, the shoulder, neck and pulled strap handle were left in a dry iron oxide finish that fired to the look of rusted metal, flecked with red, umber and black. The two skins meet at the edge of the shoulder in a single beaded line, and that line is the potter's real signature: it takes a sure hand to stop a glaze dead at a ridge, and a confident one to set rust against crystal on the same pot.

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From the Archive

Notes on the record, gathered from the sources listed below.

Other recorded works

Notes on the record

Birth year. Most dealers give 1939 to 2017; one 1stDibs listing gives 1940.
Signature forms. Engraved Ferraro on the underside is the usual form; also stamped Ferraro Vallauris and signed by hand. Our first-name Serafino on the shoulder is less common in the published record.
Picasso. One dealer calls Ferraro a close friend of Picasso and says they were exhibited together in Vallauris; we have found no independent confirmation.
Family. One listing describes Ferraro as from three generations of Vallauris potters, which conflicts with the more widely repeated account of his Sicilian birth. His son Jose worked with him in the studio.
Dating the crystal glazes. Dealers date individual crystalline pieces anywhere from the 1960s to the 1990s; the stoneware with Greek friezes and the foam and iron work are consistently placed in the 1960s and 1970s.

Sources

Every Piece Is One of a Kind

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