Floral Bud Vase
$58.00
Terracotta & Hand-Painting
Elena Russo
Vietri sul Mare, Italy
Working since
1995
With Terra & Sol
Jan 2025
Elena learned majolica from her aunt in Vietri, where the tradition of painting bright tin-glazed terracotta has been practiced for four centuries. She opened Bottega Russo in 1995 above the family shop on Corso Umberto. Her pieces carry the village's signature citrus-and-leaf vocabulary — lemons, olives, fig leaves, sun-yellow accents — but with a looser, more contemporary brush. She paints with the sea visible from the window and says the light on the water sets the tempo of the day.
The Studio
Bottega Russo
A sun-flooded studio above the family shop on Corso Umberto in Vietri sul Mare, founded by Elena in 1995.
Est. 1995
Corso Umberto I 47, 84019 Vietri sul Mare SA
Studio hours
Visit the atelier.
- Mon09:30 – 17:30
- Tue09:30 – 17:30
- Wed09:30 – 17:30
- Thu09:30 – 17:30
- FriToday09:30 – 17:30
- Sat10:00 – 14:00
- SunClosed
The Process
How the work is made.
In their words
Q & A.
What makes a Vietri piece a Vietri piece?
The colors, mostly. We use a sun-yellow that doesn't quite exist anywhere else, and we paint loose — never on a grid, never to a stencil. The piece should look like a painter made it, not a printer.
What's the longest you've worked on a single piece?
A garden urn for a private commission — three weeks of painting in afternoon sessions, then two firings. The slowest pieces are usually the ones that survive a lifetime.
Do you ever leave a piece unpainted?
Sometimes. A bare terracotta planter beside a hand-painted one makes the painted one sing louder. Restraint matters.
What inspires the motifs?
Whatever I see on my walk to the studio — a lemon tree heavy with fruit, the trail of an olive branch in the wind, the way the sea looked that morning. Then I translate it through brush.
Gallery
From the atelier.
Pieces by Elena
