A Meli Table: Object in Focus.
Orbis recently had the pleasure to work on an incredible piece by artist Salvatore Meli. Little is known about the artist’s life, but his contribution to 20th century Italian ceramics was significant. An exhibition titled ‘Terra Incognita: Italy’s Ceramic Revival’ at the Estorick Collection in 2009 highlighted Meli’s work as an important continuation of Italy’s ceramics legacy, which began with the Renaissance.
Despite a scarcity of bibliographical information on Meli, the acclaimed Italian painter and politician Renato Guttuso published a personal essay that centred the work and methods of his colleague. He described Meli’s approach as a ‘difficult and magical game’, with the artist applying strips of clay seemingly from thin air to create a vase or sculpture without using a turning wheel. The result was that each piece retained ‘a lightness, a softness, a more human colour… never cold but instead always fantastic and natural’.
Guttuso also explains the artist’s playful decoration of his works, which borrow from the Ancient Greek and Etruscan traditions of storytelling through ceramic motifs. Guttuso notes how ‘Meli tells little stories…closer to our lives and his imagination, about “workers inside a factory invaded by cats and playing with them”’, this encapsulating the ‘same fantastic impetus’ that his spontaneous material methods convey. For Guttuso and other admirers of Meli’s work, he argues, it is the ‘Decorative aspect in the rightest and healthiest sense, without snobbery and intellectualism’ which makes these joyful pieces so attractive.
We worked with a small independent gallery on a larger Meli work, a table modelled on the shape of a dog’s head, and covered with intricate patterns. A table of a similar design is included in Guttuso’s essay (pictured). Just as Guttuso praised the vibrant palettes of Meli’s works, it was thrilling to start dusting and cleaning the work to reveal the colour schemes beneath, and we were determined to return the object to its original brightness and unique narrative.
The glazed ceramic table had been damaged in multiple areas and Orbis were asked to conserve and restore the losses that had occurred throughout, as well as devise a new mounting/display system that would minimise future potential installation damage. It was a fantastic project that required collaboration and joint knowledge between our mountmakers and conservators to devise a simple and cost effective solution to this issue of re-display, and ensure the ongoing preservation of this surreal piece.
One issue was that the table comprised of two ceramic sections, one of which sits on top of the other, with the glass top added last to form the table. At the interface of the two ceramic sections, multiple chips had occurred due to the handmade ceramic and its uneven quality, likely due in part to Meli’s characteristic making method. This led to increased point of pressure on these protruding areas through which all weight was transferred, eventually causing the chipped damage we could see. In addition, multiple abrasions had occurred due to the interfaces being ground together during rotational movements at install.
The solution the Orbis team arrived at was to create an internal plinth for the upper ceramic section, onto which the upper section would be displayed. The plinth was designed to sit within the lower ceramic section, completely hidden from view, so that the upper section hovered just a couple of millimetres above. Once installed, the gap between the two sections was indiscernible, but the potential for grinding and clashing of the two delicate ceramic pieces was ultimately negated. Furthermore, the structural requirements of the lower ceramic section had been removed, as the total weight of the glass and upper ceramic were now transferred through the internal plinth, potentially increasing the lifespan of this wonderful table even further.
The chips and loss areas were consolidated and filled using reversible conservation materials, then in painted and glazed to match the surrounding design.
A dry fit assembly was carried out before the work left the studio to ensure that the concepts worked in tandem. The dry fit was also important in allowing photography which would be used to describe the installation process document. This was packed with the works to allow future simple and safe assembly.
The conserved work looked fabulous and our client was thrilled with the results. The collaboration between two distinct, yet clearly intimately linked, specialisms within the Orbis studio helped serve this object with the best treatment possible - not only in addressing immediate aesthetic issues, but in resolving structural concerns that could lead to re-damaging the object in the same way in the future, thus protecting the object and Meli’s important legacy for years to come.
