Rua Catalana

About

Rua Catalana was born in 1343 when Queen Joanna I of Anjou granted the Catalan tinsmiths their own road to boost trade in the Kingdom of Naples.

Since then, along the narrow Rua Catalana fanciful copper coffee pots, lamps and street lamps transform a simple alley in the Porto District into a fantastic setting.

At the beginning of the ‘80s there were about twenty tinsmith shops that worked every day for a clientele still lively and interested in protecting this ancient craft, today there are only six.

A craftsmanship that therefore risks disappearing for lack of manpower and young apprentices. However, in 1997 Rua Catalana saw the rehabilitation of its workshops where poor materials are worked with the techniques of the tinsmiths: an ancient “craft” that has become tradition, tradition that has become art, thus becoming a workshop-quarter declared a World Heritage Site.

Riccardo Dalisi, Neapolitan artist and architect, was the author of this process of awareness raising. He contributed by designing the illumination of the street with lights supported by sculptures made in the workshops of local artisans. The lamp called “Napolino” was born and with its articulated supporting arms it represents the activity that takes place in the workshops, leading the visitors in the paths of this original open air museum.

Projects
Famiglia Oliva
The telling of a story through table design objects that suggest a new gesture, generate curiosity and speak of hospitality and well-being, celebrating an icon of Mediterranean culture: olive oil.
Partnership
Famiglia Oliva was born from the collaboration between Astrid Luglio and Mariella Caputo. The first one is a Neapolitan designer transplanted in Milan, who has always been attentive to the creation of objects capable of activating multisensory stories, experiences that investigate the renewed need for involvement of the senses. Mariella Caputo, sommelier, master oil maker and maître of the restaurant Taverna del Capitano, from Nerano, Terra delle Sirene, has always been attentive to read the succession of changes and the consolidation of new habits in the sharing of the table. From the meeting of these two different experiences the project Famiglia Oliva was born: it starts from a Mediterranean icon, the olive oil, of which it proposes to tell the story and the consumption suggesting new gestures. This collection of design objects, made by the craftsmen of Rua Catalana in tin-plated brass and copper, is characterized by archetypal shapes and the naming of the three objects contains the three fundamental elements for the cultivation of the olive tree: Gea – the earth, Elio – the sun and Pigi – the spring.
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