Shop

Hand-thrown pieces made in Deruta, ready to travel home with you

Creta was started in 2011 by Marco and Silvia Ferrini in the hill town of Deruta, roughly twenty kilometres south of Perugia, where ceramic workshops have operated continuously since the fifteenth century. The shop you are browsing right now is a direct extension of the studio floor. Every item here was formed on one of three kick wheels Marco has been using for over a decade, fired in our gas kiln at around 1260 degrees Celsius, and hand-painted by Silvia or one of our two apprentices, Ginevra and Teo, who joined the workshop in 2019 and 2022 respectively.

We do not stock imported pieces and we do not finish anything with decal transfers. If something is listed here, it came out of our kiln in Deruta. That matters to us more than filling shelf space.

Clay bodies and glazes

Almost everything in the shop is thrown from a buff stoneware body we source from a supplier in Faenza. It fires to a warm, slightly toasted colour that shows well under our ash glazes and under the traditional majolica tin-white base we use for decorated tableware. A smaller portion of the range uses a terracotta body dug from a deposit near Città della Pieve. That red clay stays earthenware, fired lower at around 1040 degrees, and we leave it unglazed on the exterior so the material reads as honestly as possible.

Silvia mixes most glazes from raw materials rather than buying commercial ready-mixed solutions. The pale celadon you will see on several of the bowls uses a small percentage of iron oxide in a feldspathic base. The deep cobalt on the Deruta Blue collection comes from a recipe she has been refining since roughly 2014, adjusting silica and calcium ratios until the colour sat where she wanted it without crawling at the edges. Small production means small batches, and glaze results shift slightly from firing to firing. Photographs try to show accurate colour but your screen will interpret things its own way.

Tableware

The largest section of the shop. Mugs, espresso cups, pasta bowls, serving platters, small ramekins for olives or salt. Marco sizes his tableware to be used, not displayed. The pasta bowls hold a proper portion. The mugs have a generous handle your whole hand fits around rather than a decorative loop two fingers have to fight over.

Each tableware piece is food-safe, lead-free, and goes through the dishwasher without problem, though hand washing keeps the colours brighter over years. Sets are available in groups of four or six, mixed or matched. If you see four pieces of a pattern you like but want six, send us a message through the contact page and we will check whether the run is still open or arrange a made-to-order batch, which typically takes eight to ten weeks from order to dispatch.

Decorative and sculptural work

Ginevra has been developing a line of wall-hung relief tiles since late 2022. They are press-moulded from the Faenza stoneware, textured by hand before the clay firms up, and finished with a matte iron-black glaze or left in the natural buff. Sizes run from roughly 15 by 15 centimetres up to 30 by 30. Larger commissions for architectural installations are something Ginevra handles separately. The contact page will route you to her directly if that is what you are after.

Teo works mainly with vases and storage jars, forms that sit somewhere between purely functional and purely decorative. His jar lids are thrown as a paired piece to the body rather than fitted afterwards, so the relationship between the two parts reads as intentional. He also makes a run of small pinch-pot figures two or three times a year. These sell fast and are never restocked identically, so the listing page will show out of stock when they are gone.

Custom orders

We take a limited number of custom commissions each year, mostly for restaurants and small hotels in Umbria and Tuscany that want consistent tableware with a specific colour direction or a stamped logo. If you are interested in something similar, domestic or commercial, the process starts with a short conversation about shape, quantity, glaze palette and timing. We are honest about lead times. A run of sixty covers for a restaurant takes longer than a set of six mugs for a kitchen in Bologna, and we will tell you exactly how long before you commit to anything.

Shipping and packaging

Everything ships from Deruta. We pack by hand using corrugated card cells and paper fill, no styrofoam. Breakage on transit is rare but it happens. If something arrives damaged, photograph it before unpacking further, then contact us within 48 hours. We sort it out with a replacement or a refund depending on what makes more sense given lead times. Italy and most of Europe typically see delivery within five to seven working days. Shipments outside the EU take longer and may be subject to import duties that are the buyer's responsibility to settle on arrival.