ABOUT US Arturo Mora Benavent comes from of a long line of potters from Manises. In the last third of the nineteenth century, his great-great-grandfather, Fernando Mora Osca, was the first in the family to devote himself to the production of lustreware. Arturo treasures his great-great-grandfather’s pieces that are signed "F.M." on the back. Arturo’s great-grandfather, named Arturo Mora Zorrilla, had a notebook of lustreware formulas dated 1896, which Arturo inherited. Both of these relatives participated in the Historicist artistic movement, which in Manises focused on the recovery of Gothic-Mudejar ceramics. In 1958, Arturo’s grandfather, Salvador Mora Zorrilla as well as his father, Salvador Escobar Mora, founded the factory of decorative ceramics, in which Arturo Mora still works. He works within an age-old craft tradition, while adding his own contemporary touch to the work. Within this rich cultural technique, inherited from a family tradition, is not surprising that Arturo Mora uses various ceramic processes. Lustreware is the most prominent, as well as the most difficult technique used to make reproductions of historic ceramic pieces made in the “obradores” neighbourhood of Manises during the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries. Today these wonderful pieces are found in the most important museums around the world. Arturo also makes his own creations as well as interpretations of historic pieces. These pieces are thrown on the potter's wheel, painted by hand without using a support and fired a third time in reduction, as was done for centuries to make Hispano-Moresque lustreware. Awards Arturo Mora has received numerous awards in recognition of his outstanding lustreware pieces, including: - “Manises Qualitat i Disseny” Award, for the best traditional ceramics exhibited at the Cevider Fair, Valencia 1997. - “Manises Qualitat i Disseny” Award, for the best neo-artisanal pottery exhibited at the Cevider Fair, Valencia 1998. - “Manises Qualitat i Disseny” Award, for the best traditional ceramics exhibited at the fair Cevider, Valencia 2001. - “XVI Premio Caja Jaén de Artesanía” Second prize for the form of ceramics, Jaén 2004. Exhibitions In addition to the showroom which opened in his workshop in Manises in 2004, he has been invited to participate in the following exhibitions: - “Lustre Ware Ceramics, Tradition and Modernity”, Headquarters of the Valencian Export Institute, Los Angeles, USA 1998. - “Breaking the mold: Arturo Mora, Benlloch-Algora and Vicente Gimeno,” Manises School of Ceramics, 1999. - Solo exhibition, Martinez Glera Art Gallery, Logroño 2004. - “VII International Biennial of Ceramics,” Manises 2005. Comments about his work "Arturo Mora. In recent years, he has directed his efforts to regain the lustre technique. His current production has two focuses: reproducing Manises lustreware of the 15th – 16th century through the use of thrown pieces decorated with good brush-work, secondly, using lustreware to create new works, which are both formal and decorative. This is one of the most serious attempts to update traditional lustreware and bring it into a new context. " Josep Pérez Camps, director of the Museum of Ceramics in Manises. Published in the exhibition brochure “Breaking the mold: Arturo Mora, Benlloch-Algora and Vicente Gimeno,” Manises School of Ceramics, 1999. LUSTREWARE IN MANISES, THE PRIMARY PRODUCTION CENTRE OF THIS WORK Discovered by the Abbasid Arabs in Irak, the lustreware technique emerged and developed during the ninth century and later reached al-Andalus, where in the thirteenth century there is archaeological evidence of its production in Malaga and Murcia. At the beginning of the 14th century, Don Pedro Boil, the 4th Lord of Manises, wanted the potteries on his estate used this new technique. It is thought that he encouraged potters from the Nazari kingdom of Granada, to settle in Manises. This caused a radical change, qualitatively better, in the ceramic production. Taking into account that the majority of the early architects of gold lustre in Manises were Muslim people, called “Mudéjares”, coexisting in a reconquered land by Christians, it is very understandable that formal and decorative aspects of both cultures intertwined. From this combination sprang highly original ceramics that appealed to the European courts, and in general, to social classes with high purchasing power. The reason was because of the exotic and the magnificence of its decorations, which in many cases, placing orders in advance, included the coats of arms of the nobility. This pottery reached its peak during the fifteenth century when the city of Valencia was having a period of cultural and economic growth, and whose major port was the primary point of exit for its exports. During the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries the workers of Manises continued producing the gold lustre despite the expulsion of the Moors in 1609, and the irruption of the Renaissance polychrome pottery, which spread through the peninsula, Seville and Talavera, in the early sixteenth century. By this time, the lustreware technique popularity and market demand fell into decline and nearly disappeared in the nineteenth century. However, at the end of this century the lustreware was reborn associated with the historicist artistic movement. It materialized in the recovery of Hispanic-Moorish ceramics that have helped to keep alive this specialty in Manises in the twenty-first century so brilliantly in Arturo Mora’s studio.