Pottery shop in Deruta, Italy.  The Italian hillside town of Deruta is known throughout the world for its spectacular pottery. For more than six centuries, Deruta craftspeople have produced and exported ceramics.

The local clay was good for ceramics, whose production began in the Early Middle Ages, but found its artistic peak in the 15th and early 16th century, with highly characteristic local styles, such as the “Bella Donna” plates with conventional portraits of beauties, whose names appear on fluttering banderoles with flattering inscriptions. The lack of fuel enforced low firing temperatures, but from the beginning of the 16th century, Deruta compensated with its metallic lustre glazes in golds and ruby red. In the 16th century Deruta produced the so-called “Rafaellesque” ware, decorated with fine arabesques and grottesche on a fine white ground.

Deruta, with Gubbio and Urbino, continues to produced some of the finest Italian maiolica.