BESPOKE
An increasingly important part of what we do, bespoke work (or as the Americans say, custom work) ranges from adapting existing designs for private customers (changing tile formats to suit a particular space, glazing exposed tile edges etc.) to the development of entirely new products for large commercial projects and building-restoration projects.From hand-made terracotta tiles to glass mosaic or industrial porcelain, just about anything is possible. We work with some of the most talented and experienced individual craftsmen in Italy, but also with factories using cutting-edge technology, and this flexibility allows us to choose the most appropriate production facility for each project.
case study : Pisani Spa Room
When Pisani Plc - Britain's largest wholesaler of natural stone - chose Progetti Italiani's hand-glazed ceramic tiles as the perfect foil for their most luxurious natural stone finishes, they asked us to help them achieve something very special. They wanted the two mini infinity pools in their Spa Room to be lined with gold-glazed ceramic tiles, and they wanted real gold.The look Pisani were after was that of our 'Oro Antico' glaze, but the tiles needed to be able to resist constant contact with mildly chlorinated water, a context in which real-gold glazes would never normally be specified.
Working with some of our most experienced artisans, we experimented with several options and came up with a solution both beautiful and technically suitable: a hand-painted gold mirror glaze "sealed" beneath a protective vitreous layer that could be fired at a temperature low enough not to burn away the gold and which reacted with the gold just enough to reveal the strokes of the craftsmen's brushes, softening the mirror effect and creating a delicate play of light and shadow.
The resulting tiles - and the pools - are simply stunning.