Made by hand
Ceramics, iron and the small workshops still going in the hill towns.
Chianti sells a great deal of wine and, increasingly, a great deal of merchandise. The distance between the two is where the real artisans live, and they are getting harder to find.
Radda has kept more than most. Ceramiche Rampini has been hand-painting in Renaissance patterns for decades, out in the countryside on the Molinlungo road; they will ship a full dinner service home and it will arrive intact. Nearer the village, Angela Pianigiani works alone in a studio down a dirt track, and is usually at the wheel when you walk in. Decori Neltempo is a husband-and-wife shop of hand-painted furniture, ceramics and clothes, all made by the two of them.
Greve's square has a working forge a few minutes away — Cappelli, still making beds and lamps in wrought iron, which is not a tourist trade and does not pretend to be.
Impruneta, just north, is the terracotta town: the clay has been fired there since before 1300 and the garden pots you see all over Tuscany mostly started life in its kilns.
The rule of thumb is simple. If the person who made the thing is in the room, you are in the right shop. If everything is identical and there are forty of them, you are in the wrong one.
Every place we mention is on the map, with what's open today.
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