‘Proceed calmly in Balance’ Rina Menardi is an Italian ceramist that is not easily forgotten. Highly influenced by sculpture, nature and organic forms. Her pieces could be described as art pieces, sculptures or designs to even poems, songs or plays. Rina Menardi’s collections are a fusion of art, design and craftsmanship, where chromatism, aesthetics and functionality converge in a synthesis of intuitions coming from everyday life and events, creating atmospheres that inspire serenity and pleasure. While the overarching aesthetic is always the same, each piece—whether a serving dish, platter, or bowl—is distinctly unique due to its handmade nature. Her tableware and decorative objects are each unique and deliberately irregular, hand-crafted in her studio just outside Venice. Menardi’s desire is to to produce designs that are ‘removed from the style of so many mass-produced items.’ She chooses baked clay because she senses in this material the possibility to express herself through gaining possession of some of nature’s secrets, understanding her laws, respecting her rules and limitations. The ever-personal research she conducts over the expressive potentialities of baked clay has always been accompanied by her growth as an individual. About herself, Rina says: “ Clay allows me to give a three-dimensional shape to the here- and-now ‘me’. It is a way of communicating with myself, and therefore with others. I simply strive to respect the natural surfacing of things that are already within us”.