The coastal tower of Torre Colimena is one of the many towers built along the Salento coast to defend itself against Turkish incursions. It was commissioned by Emperor Charles V, King of Spain, in the 16th century. It has a square shape with four corner merlons and a panoramic terrace which overlooks the bay with a splendid view of the sea and the Salina dei Monaci. Entrance to the first floor is free, while the second floor has been hosting the Ceramics Museum since 2021, a collection of ceramic artefacts from different periods and types.
A Wonderful Example of a Battle Tower from the Middle Ages on the Southern Coast
As part of the activities aimed at understanding and enhancing ancient, modern and contemporary ceramics, the National Association of Friends of Ceramics has conducted research on ceramic containers for wine, in particular on the Grottaglie jug.
In Grottaglie, the origin of the art of pottery is lost in time, but it is the jug, called srulu in the local dialect, that characterizes the production of the last two centuries, when, for daily consumption, wine was poured from the capasone into the srulu.
The word srulu derives from the Latin urceolus, diminutive of urceus, jug,
corrupt or first in ursulu then, by apheresis, in rsulu and finally, by metathesis, in
srulu.
it is probably an onomatopoeic word, which indicates the sound that
is made when the wine is sucked from the ceramic container
SOTS
done with gusto.
Car zano its shape the ovoid body on a disk base, the wide neck
esti
o. the ribbon handle and the upturned nose pourer. Over time it has undergone
changes: in the nineteenth-century examples it is pot-bellied, while, in the
SH vi ones, it gradually tends to lengthen, from 20 to 40 cm. with a capacity of 20 to 40 cm. made with poorly purified local clay and covered with a variable glaze, from ivory white to dull yellow.
a therefore of a simple, poor artefact, which the potters of Grottaglie
da
embellished with short brush strokes and with chromatic vivacity: ochre to iron yellow, from light blue to intense turquoise, from greasy green to manganese brown; more or less bright colors, tastefully combined in a balanced and luminous relationship on the background glaze.
Meape ocqui brato elumi so ilos values of ceramic production. the decorative motifs constitute the iconographic repertoire of the Grotagliese manufacture of the 19th and 20th centuries: from anthropomorphic elements to twisted, phytomorphic, landscape and geometric ones, ending with the continuous double thread with daisies, which always defines the edge of the artistic, it is therefore authentic popular art, which expresses common feelings and siliations of authentic nal art, ana from sophisticated or rastal models of thought; a more persuasive arinio even more, though
tsula his language niae an that persuaded cultured". An art that every
rono or rework vescio quil sa fire "core in the reality of heni
Bon, to pivar nichi mie of sa far i isiperssioni, but also of joys, of hopes and of faith.
Elio Scarciglia
Translated by Google •
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