Typescript of autograph letter to ceramist Giovanni Crippa, July 31, 1979. First published in the catalog of the exhibition Nanni Valentini opere 1982 – 1985, Galleria Civica, Modena, 1987. Republished in Riga 3, 1993, pag. 56. Republished in: Flaminio Gualdoni, Nanni Valentini, Silvana Editoriale, 2005, pag. 168.
Arcore, July 31, 1979
Dear Giovanni,
Piccolpasso thus begins his book Dell’Arte del Vasaio [About the Art of the Potter]:
Prologue to readers
… faithfully I set out to divulge all the secrets of the potter’s art; in connection with which there would not have been a lack of those who with greater shrewdness, who with more terse language had done what at the present time I have done …
Some five hundred years have passed, some technology has organized “empires,” produced ceramic materials for flights into space, but for us time has stopped at that murky river water:
… you dig four feet into the ground and ditches from the heart of the earth so that the turbid water can go down easily by channels of its own.
They tried to make us deny contamination with this spell. The craftsmanship showed consideration for a happiness where they did not mark what they were stealing, mystifying, dispersing. A happiness where they believed and still believe in signs–oracles. This enchantment, which I like to think of it as an archaeology without memory, unlike that of the fairy tale, does not assure pilgrimages to the East, nor itineraries through time, nor even appointments with that culture, which, certainly not out of distraction, as well as the kneading of clay, are things removed from time and, for those who use them, are verifications that have in their counterpart, and certainly in their negative, repetition, ritual, the laziness of “hands alone,” the miracle. The variables of fire, earth, time, water, had been hidden from us by the octopus of the Cretan vase who had instead pointed us to privileged places for particular mixtures and clays, had certain measurements marked as unique. Now you know that this is how things are but, they are also different.
Listening to my reading of a vase, a potter corrected me by telling me the meaning and process of that work. The clay with which it was turned was the earth around the village, sandy, with stones and other things. Washed, kneaded, and then put back outdoors, exposed to water and other naturals, it was then resumed and kneaded several times for a few years until it met the properties required by the molding. The object was then fired by the flame of a low fire, a slow process that required several days. The fuel, which among other things was used to support the objects inside the kiln, was also what caused the necessary glazing.
Now, even though we have protected ourselves against “eternal returns” and are prepared to appreciate certain objects, we nevertheless remain deaf to understanding the geometry of these processes, to hearing their meaning and the topicality, dramatic to me, of their questions.
You have asked me to introduce or to introduce your book-manual where, precisely, you attempt to sew the plots of these variables, to make the various warps run through, with data and news, to make the surfaces possible to read. I cannot do this, since your book is the extension of your work, a sign of your existence and therefore an ideological proposition with its implicit choices, its underlying values. Although I am tempted by it, it is certainly not out of a strategy of prudence that I advise you to do it.
I can wish that those who read it are, like me, helped to be attentive to the various signs and their eventual presence, therefore to wonder and marvel at a clod of earth.
Nanni Valentini, Arcore, July 31, 1979