Subject: Amalfi n stuff
Hi everyone!
I just printed out all the emails I'd sent about my travels- 55pages!!! Wow, I had no idea I'd written so much! Well, I hope you've been enjoying them- if not, please tell me, and I won't send you any more! But until then, here's the next installment:
After gawking at the MCEscher buildings a bit longer, and sitting down to do a watercolor of them glowing in the afternoon sun, we continued down the hill into town. Suddenly this narrow winding path was becoming walled in by buildings, and it made it feel that much tighter.
I never did measure it, but it felt like it was narrower than a staircase inside a home, so about 3 feet (80-90cm) wide? And it would twist and turn and go down stairs, just like it did further up the hill, only now with the steep walls on either side it was that much more noticeable. At times it felt like we had made a wrong turn, only to realize that if we continued a bit further the path would take a sharp turn to the right, around the next building, or suddenly plummet down a long staircase, and continue through an opening in the wall in front of us, far below our line of vision. At this point everything was in shadows, and although it was by no means dark-in fact the amount of light was quite comfortable, and it was cooler there, with no direct sunlight and the huge thermal masses of the stone/rubble walls- it seemed it in comparison to the strong sunlight beaming outside.
I think that's part of what was so striking here- even though technically we were still outside, everything was so small and narrow, and with a different climate, that it felt like we were inside! That the whole town was one big house, and we were just walking right through these peoples' hallway! The doors to the homes opened right out into this path, as they would a hallway, and a few times I felt like we really were intruding on their private lives. It was as if one of the layers of privacy that we have-because we have the space for it, and want shelter from the colder climate outside- was simply not there: street and hallway were one. It certainly makes for more contact with your neighbors and the rest of the world, which really seems cool to me, and I've noticed that in other places since then: Naples, Split, Dubrovnik. Then again, since I've never actually lived in such a community, only observed for a few hours at a time, I can't really say completely. But I would imagine it wouldn't be nearly as impersonal as a highrise apartment building, where all the windows face out and the doors to the common hallways remain shut. You would be able to do what you want with your piece of the fabric- as evidenced here- some walls were freshly plastered and painted, others had the stone and rubble showing, and there were plants growing on the walls!- but what you do would have a greater impact on your neighbors.
That evening a group of us ate dinner in the pizza place at the foot of the church we visited in the morning (Sant'Andrea), and it turned out most of the class was there, too. We were being really stupid, making the water glasses sing by rubbing our fingers around the rims, and everyone else was complaining, "no wonder American tourists have a bad reputation!", which was true... but it was funny anyway, even though the waiter wasn't happy with us!
Then the pizzas arrived (in Europe when you order pizza everyone gets their own.) Matt's arrived with a roll sitting in the middle of it- he had ordered pizza surprise- this must be the surprise! The waiter said "don't eat!" quite firmly, in English and Italian, and we all looked at him funny, and he ran back to the kitchen to grab a little plate, plopped the roll on it, and started to cut it open to show us there was aluminum foil inside. Matt opened it up, and found a little ceramic fish inside, brightly colored, with the name of the restaurant on it!
It was so cool!
Actually, this whole area is known for its ceramics, all beautifully handpainted in bright vibrant colors and patterns. I bought a plate for myself while we were here, and I've been eating off it all year in Zürich, so I'm always reminded of this trip! It seems like every store was selling these ceramics- some were the same in every store, but if you really looked, some stores had some different stuff- very eye-catching. That and the lemon alcohol sold in pretty glass containers everywhere- I think all the lemons grown here must be used for this stuff!
That evening we caught a beautiful sunset, soft pastel colors rolling over the hill to match the buildings, and the hillside turning to a softer, hazier shade itself.
But the water remained a magnificent teal, and so clear, down to the white rocks below. If I didn't have a picture of it, I wonder if I (or you) would believe it could actually be this color!
A few of us waded in the water a bit, (actually, somehow Matt and I were designated official bag-watchers as everyone else jumped in the water a bit) and it was so incredible to stand there, looking back at the town behind us, all lit up, with people walking by enjoying the warm evening air, music playing- I think there was a woman with a bad voice singing the same three cheesy songs over and over-, the silhouettes of the cliffs in the darkness, and in front of us the calm water, rhythmically splashing up onto the beach- sometimes further than others- and making a cool rainstick sound as it strained through the rocks back to the sea. Out on the water the anchored yachts had strings of big white lights on them that reflected in the water, and where the land wrapped around we could see lights on the opposite shore! It was so fantastically beautiful, I wanted to stay there forever! Did I tell you I'm collecting places I'm going to have to go back to someday, for at least a solid month? Amalfi is HIGH on that list!!
The next morning the sun cast such a warm glow on the building next to the balcony off my hotel room- the white stucco was radiating a soft yellow, and even the strong shadows spoke of the warm morning sun. It was hard to believe we'd be leaving already, but we packed our bags, loaded them onto the bus, and headed off to the next destination.
Our first stop was Fabbrica Solimene, which is a ceramic factory in Vietri, designed by Paolo Soleri. We got a tour of the building and got to see how their ceramics are produced (actually that's kind of one and the same). From the outside this building was a series of tall cylinders, tapering to a smaller diameter at the bottom. The space in between these cylinders left by the tapering was glazed. The cylinders had a pattern of circles covering the whole surface- terra cotta and bright green, I think (I don't have any photos, only a b/w sketch!) :( ,interrupted only by the two big rounded diamond (45° rotated square) windows, one per floor.
The circles were the bottoms of the 40cm (16") deep ceramic vases that the building was built of! They crated an airspace, which worked like an insulation layer to deal with the climate changes throughout the year. I really liked this- what a great way to use the product of the building for the building itself! It was pretty AND practical! Soleri had worked for Frank Lloyd Wright beforehand, and the design was derived from the Johnson Wax Bldg, and was a novelty of the 1950's. (I'm reading from my notes here.)
The inside was just as cool- it was laid out in a big ellipse, like a running track, that was a continuous ramp with a big opening in the middle. The inside of the ramp was supported by big structural elements (I guess you could call them columns??) that were wide at the bottom and tapered as they went up, and and leaned in (out?) towards the outside walls. At the same time they kept branching out, splitting in two so that the second "branch" leaned back in towards the center, so that, just like a tree, the top of each wide column was actually 4 narrow ones, supporting a much greater span, but with such a light, airy feel!
The roof in the center was glazed, so that there was direct light on the inside, the intensity of which was softened and distributed by the form of the walls (the inside of those cylinders I was telling you about.)
The ramped ring was created to correspond with the production process: it started at the top with the shaping of the clay,
then along to the painting on the floor below....etc...to the presentation of the finished goods on the ground floor in the tall open atrium. The kiln was in one tall vertical shaft, so that at the end of each step on each floor, the ceramics would end up at the kiln again to be fired before going on to the next step. The whole design had an elegance that I found quite beautiful. Unfortunately, today the kiln needs to be horizontal rather than vertical, so the building doesn't make sense with the production process any more.
As we were walking through the building we got to see people actually working here, and we learned a bit about how these ceramics were made! It was definitely really cool to see, although I feel kinda bad about how Allison and I kept talking about how it compared to what we saw in Meissen the week before! (I don't think I had ever written about that: while we were in Dresden our classes took a trip to the town of Meissen, and visited the museum of the factory where they make meissen porcelain- really incredibly beautiful stuff, so delicate, so detailed, so expensive- DM200.- for a teacup?!? Anyway, we were still in awe of what we had seen there, and in our eyes I think very little could have compared!)
Our next stop was Fornace della Cava, another tile factory. This place was amazing! We showed up and got a presentation of their products in their showroom, and were treated like future potential clients (which we were) rather than just students! This firm is known for the range of colors and sizes of their beautiful handmade tiles, and supply tiles to famous designers, including SITE. We were taken on a tour of the factory itself, and got to see how their tiles are made (it takes a total of 17 days, including 9 days of drying and 36 hours in the kiln!)
This place was crazy, everything they did was so tedious, but so meticulous, and the end results were beautiful. At the end of the tour they had an apero for us, and gave us each a CD-ROM and a book of their producs, and a few sample tiles!
We spent the afternoon in Pompei
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