In the Studio with Matilde Argiolas

MAKERS | ART & CULTURE | CABANA MAGAZINE

Matilde Argiolas hails from a large family of porcelain collectors and has been "obsessed" with the material since she was 15. The hand painted plates she produces are so pristine that it's hard to imagine they are the work of a single artist, not a machine. Matilde shares the art of her craft and new Hungarian-inspired designs for Cabana. 

WORDS BY SARA PIERDONÀ | ART & CULTURE | 1 AUGUST 2024 

Porcelain artist Matilde Argiolas, photographed at her apartment in Rome  

Matilde Argiolas’ elegant, hand-painted porcelain plates are so extraordinarily precise that admirers, in an attempt to pay her a compliment, often describe them as industrially produced, without realising their faux pas. Surely, no human hand could produce such a clean, uniform finish, absent of smudges or uncertainties?

At first glance, these pristine plates do look similar to industrially manufactured decal products. You would never imagine that Matilde's workshop is the kitchen island of her cozy Roman flat. Next to the salt and pepper and other signs of domestic life, Matilde keeps painstakingly arranged bottles of her pigments, which she mixes herself.

Tucked away in a corner is the oven, where the plates are baked to 1300 degrees. When the plates are ready to be transferred to the oven, Matilda's dog, a playful cocker spaniel, is momentarily locked out of the kitchen to prevent him from breaking something in a moment of exuberance. Missing is the turntable, which normally assists craftspeople tasked with drawing borders or other circular shapes, such as plates. Matilde shrugs: she used to have one, but over the years has trained herself to have such a steady hand that she no longer needs it.

New: Matilde’s Danube plates, inspired by traditional Hungarian embroideries.

For Matilde, the decision to work from her kitchen island makes perfect sense, and seems less eccentric when one considers her family’s heritage and connection to porcelain. In Meissen, one of the world's oldest and most prestigious porcelain capitals, the same occurred: Matilda's ancestors painted within the walls of their homes. They even had a precise name, 'Haus Maler'.

The Rome-based artist hails from a large family of porcelain collectors and remembers the beginning of her own obsession. On a trip to Meissen, aged 15, she experienced something akin to an episode of Stendhal syndrome when she was standing before a yellow coffee pot. It was the color, so intense, so rich, that sent her into ecstasy.

Decades later, when she had turned this passion into a fully-fledged vocation and was trying to make a name for herself, she saw a magazine article entitled, 'The Power of Color'. "It gave me great satisfaction," recalls Matilde, "because those were the years of minimalism, [when] neutral tones raged. Flipping through the magazine, the pages were an uninterrupted sequence of greys, until an article with photos of my plates, which were an explosion of color!"

Of course, color also presents porcelain's most difficult challenge. “The colors almost all bake at different temperatures, which mean several pass in and out of the kiln. Blues, greens and purples, for example, bake at very high temperatures, while yellows and reds can withstand 750 degrees at the most. Speed is not a friend to this work,” she concludes, explaining why it is increasingly rare to meet craftsmen who possess these same skills.

In 2021, Matilde created a pair of plates for Cabana's Houghton Hall collection inspired by Imari ceramics. This year, she has produced two striking new designs for Cabana. Aware of founder Martina Mondadori's long-standing admiration for traditional Eastern European crafts, Matilde drew inspiration from Hungarian textiles. The plates’ motif is a stylization of vernacular embroidery, reinterpreted with bright, vivid colors in a more Mediterranean key (Matilde's palette).

Matilde starts with a white plate, which is always made of Limonges porcelain. “I would not accept working with porcelain of inferior quality, because there is a risk that the colors will be altered and black spots will come out.” The first firing is to fix the design, followed by one for each color, a second coat of gold and, finally, a last firing to rework the design”. Paying close attention, the various firing stages can be distinguished by touch: some colours are more 'raised'. At the end of this demanding process, the decoration is highly durable and the colors bright and brilliant.

"At this point, only vinegar and lemon juice risk damaging plates that are otherwise unalterable. But I kind of like that there is this compulsion to 'be careful'. There are objects, beautiful objects, that deserve more delicate treatment, such as the crystal glasses with the gold rim that I received when I got married...it would never occur to me to put them in the dishwasher!"

When not following a specific commission, Matilde finds inspiration in museums or antique shops. Recently, she made revisited reproductions of 18th-century plates by Clerici and Rubati, bought as prototypes. But the starting point does not have to be a ceramic: it can be the decoration of a Japanese kimono, a detail of an Indian block-print or wallpaper. “I am not afraid of my plates being anachronistic, because I always choose very bright colors, which have the power to modernise any decoration," she says. "It's the magic of color: choose a nice one and even monochrome plates become interesting... I get asked for them a lot."