Nautilo di Cobalto

I am the Nautilo di Cobalto wallpaper, born of an ancient gesture: the brush dipped in deep blue that draws, on a lime white ground, the perfect spiral of a sea shell. I am not relief, I am not real ceramic: I am its memory, printed flat and frontal as the language of maiolica requires, and yet able to give back all its painterly vibration.

Each of my rosettes comes from a single gesture that winds on itself, traced in cobalt underglaze on tin glaze, dotted with small accents of saffron that light the heart of the spiral. Around them, stylised leaves and tendrils run to fill every space, in that vibrant irregularity that only the hand — and not the machine — can allow. The rosettes repeat at regular intervals, rotated and varied in size, so that the design weaves on without a break and without hierarchy, an orderly Mediterranean swarming.

From a distance I am rhythm: a geometry that breathes, warm and marine, able to receive whoever crosses a hotel lobby with the same quiet as a cloister looking out to sea. Close up I am a story: the line that trembles slightly, the dot of glaze that is never identical to the next. WallZad has translated this double nature — monumental and minute — into a print that does not betray the craft origin of the motif, giving back its chromatic depth and the precision of its drawing. I exist to be looked at twice: the first time from a distance, the second to let the detail surprise you.