Kerstin Rauch arrived from Germany in 2001 and never left. In her workshop on the hills of Reggello, with olive groves at the window, she makes ceramics for plants and for everything that hangs: hanging pots with macramé she knots herself, wind chimes, olle (terracotta jars that water plants on their own). Every piece is hers from beginning to end — the idea, the wheel, the colour.
Workshop in Pietrapiana, Reggello (FI) · at the ceramicists' markets, from Piazza Santa Croce to the Fortezza
Some come to Tuscany for a summer and some for a lifetime. Kerstin Rauch is of the second kind: twenty-five years, a wheel, and a palette stolen from the landscape.
From her studio in Pietrapiana, a hamlet of Reggello, you can see the olive groves — and you can see them inside her pieces too, because the colours and the surfaces of the area end up in the glazes. Hers is a ceramics that does not sit still on shelves: it hangs, it sways, it sounds, it waters. It is made to live among plants, which are the other half of her world.
Kerstin brought her artistic training from Germany; her life, since 2001, she has built in Tuscany. She came into ceramics through the door of decoration: maiolica, the brush on the glaze, colour on shapes made by others.
And that is precisely where the right restlessness was born: decorating somebody else's biscuit means telling stories on pages already written. At a certain point it was no longer enough for her.
Her answer was to go back to school: a course at Montelupo Fiorentino — the Tuscan capital of ceramics — to learn the wheel. Since then every piece has been entirely hers: the concept, the shape thrown on the wheel, the decoration. No stage delegated, no bought-in shapes.
In between there was also a pause, the real kind: the years devoted to her children. Three years ago she reopened her VAT number and her workshop, with a clearer idea than before of what she wanted to do.
The clear idea is this: for three years her production has turned on a single theme, plants and the garden. Hanging vases accompanied by the macramé she knots herself; jellyfish-shaped holders for air plants, made for tillandsias; wind chimes; lamps and lanterns; bird feeders; even capsules for sprouting an avocado.
And then the olle: clay vessels that stand beside the plant and release the water slowly, on their own — an irrigation system farmers were already using in Roman times, brought back to life in a windowsill version. It is the piece that sums up her whole poetics: beautiful to look at, and born to serve a plant.
Kerstin sells mainly in person, and she has learnt a rule of the craft the hard way: the context counts as much as the piece. At general markets, squeezed between stalls selling everything at throwaway prices, a collection that asks to be explained gets lost. At markets for ceramicists only — Arte della Ceramica in Piazza Santa Croce, ninety colleagues once a year — the comparison is between equals, and her work is worth twice as much.
Away from the fairs, her pieces travel more than the workshop would suggest: the small terracotta sculptures — turtles, frogs, hedgehogs, hearts, each one different from the next — accompany the TOTEM collection by SoapUp, an Italian bathroom design brand; some Florentine boutiques stock her creations; and the WhatsApp catalogue serves the customers who order from a distance, with shipments prepared in the workshop.
There is also a line worth framing in her record: selection among the artisans of Artigianato e Palazzo, the exhibition at Palazzo Corsini in Firenze — one of the most selective invitations Tuscan artistic craft can receive.
A one-person workshop, where every piece goes through all the stages without ever changing hands.
The shape is born from the wheel she learnt at Montelupo: it is the gesture that turned a decorator into a complete ceramicist, in command of the piece from the raw clay onwards.
Maiolica was her first language and it shows: full colours, living surfaces, a palette borrowed from the hills outside the window.
The hanging vases travel with the weave that holds them — and the macramé is not bought by the metre: she makes it herself, knot by knot, to the measure of the piece.
The wind chimes are a family affair: the sounding inserts come from her husband's hands. Every chime comes out with a voice of its own, not a standard sound.
Olle for watering, jellyfish for tillandsias, capsules for the avocado: objects that solve a real problem in the garden before they decorate it.
At Florentine events such as Artefacendo you may catch her at work: working in public is part of the craft — and the best sales argument there is.
Five families, a single theme. The pieces are on Tuscany Market Hub: each with its own page and a photograph of the actual piece.
The heart of the workshop and its signature: vases for hanging plants with macramé she knots herself, and the jellyfish-shaped holders for air plants that host tillandsias — the plants that live on air. Ceramics that take up no shelf: they inhabit the empty space overhead, where nobody ever thinks of putting something beautiful.
Wind chimes and rattles: the ceramics you hear before you see. The sounding inserts are made in the family, by her husband's hands, and every chime has a voice of its own.
The olle that water on their own as in Roman times, the capsules for sprouting an avocado, the bird feeders, the ribbed mosquito-coil holder for summer evenings. Objects born from a real problem, solved with clay.
Lamps and lanterns: pierced ceramics that by day are an object and by evening become an atmosphere. The most domestic chapter of the catalogue.
Turtles, frogs, elephants, hedgehogs and hearts in terracotta, modelled by hand one by one for SoapUp's TOTEM collection: no two alike. Proof that her ceramics can hold their own in Italian catalogue design as well.
Kerstin's pieces on Tuscany Market Hub, each with its own page and a photograph of the actual piece — and a dedicated stock held in the workshop, so that what is in the window is really there.
The appointment in the Venetian capital of ceramics: the first trip beyond the Tuscan borders in her recent calendar.
Fortezza da Basso, Firenze, among the businesses selected by CNA: the institutional showcase of Tuscan craft, for the second time after the 2024 edition.
Among the exhibitors of artistic craft in the drawing room of Santa Croce, with CNA Firenze.
With live working in front of the public: the wheel in the square, the process shared with those watching.
Ceramics on tour among the wines: a presence at the ARTour del Gusto Toscano, 6–8 September.
After the years devoted to her children, the VAT number reopens and the plants & garden line is born: the workshop starts again with a single theme and a clear head.
From Germany to the Florentine hills, with an artistic training in her suitcase: first decoration on maiolica, then Montelupo and the wheel.
No fixed pitch at the weekly market: Kerstin works to a calendar of dates — the ceramicists' and craft fairs, where her public knows to look for her.
Kerstin Rauch, a German ceramicist who has lived and worked in Tuscany since 2001. In her workshop in Pietrapiana, at Reggello (FI), she makes pieces entirely her own — from the wheel to the decoration — devoted to plants and the garden: hanging vases with macramé, holders for air plants, wind chimes, olle for irrigation, lamps and lanterns.
They are vessels of porous clay which, placed beside the plant, release the water slowly and steadily: an irrigation system used since Roman times. Kerstin's are also designed not to be buried completely — they work, and in the meantime they let themselves be looked at.
Yes, and it is real macramé: knotted by hand by Kerstin herself, to the measure of the piece it holds. Vase and weave are born together, in the same workshop — the weave is half the object.
It is the technique of decorating ceramics over the glaze, the one of the great Tuscan traditions such as Montelupo: colours laid on with a brush that are fixed in the firing. It was Kerstin's first language; she began as a decorator before learning the wheel and taking command of the shape as well.
In person, at the specialist ceramics and Florentine craft fairs — from Arte della Ceramica in Piazza Santa Croce to MIDA at the Fortezza da Basso — or at a distance, through the workshop's WhatsApp catalogue. The pieces are also on Tuscany Market Hub.
Every piece is thrown on the wheel and decorated by hand, so none is truly identical to another: the shapes repeat, the hands do not. Many creations exist in colour and size variants, and for sale every object is photographed for what it is: the piece you see is the piece you receive.
It happens, and it is worth the visit: at events such as Artefacendo in Piazza dei Ciompi the work is done live, wheel and brushes in front of the public. The calendar of her appearances can be followed on Instagram and on the workshop's website.
Here we tell who makes them and why. There is the catalogue: every piece with its own page and a photograph of the actual piece.
This profile is part of the archive for Ceramics. All the producers in the network.