GIOVANNI DESIMONE JUG "GIUSEPPINA"

Thanks again go to our dear friend from Chicago AmberRose!

Dear Amber gifted me this faience jug from the Italian firm of De Simone and it arrived this week in the land of Oz! Sydney it seems is an area known well to Amber in her youth. In my perverse way I have given the figure on the jug a name: "Giuseppina" or Josephine. She has a great hand made look to her and I love the pinched spout and ample handle. I've put her here with "Turi" the bottle vase, who has become her wide-eyed 'copaesano'.

"I have collected a few of the pieces by De Simone over the years. I like the vibrancy of this faience/faenza. De Simone is a firm begun by Giovanni De Simone in Palermo Sicily in the early fifties in the area around Piazza Leoni 2 ( the Jewish Quarter of this historic city). In the early days the work was mostly home-wares and decorative tiles in the traditional manner. But at the end of the fifties they were producing a much more colourful and humourous range of articles characterized by thick glazes. The firm then set up in Rome as well because of their successes where the family business continues today."

This jug is a great glimpse of the good times and life in Palermo and for that reason are collected by Italo-Australians and Italophiles here in Australia.