The earliest evidence of ceramic production in the Tarquinia area is very ancient. Impasto ceramic objects found in some burial sites can be attributed to the Rinaldone culture and the subsequent Bronze Age. These sites were mainly north of the Marta river. The askoid-shaped vase and the biconical vase, preserved in the National Archaeological Museum, date back to the Final Bronze Age.

Proto–villanovan artefacts have been found around Pian di Civita, a vast plateau a few kilometres from today’s Tarquinia, on which the powerful Etruscan city of Tarchna stood.

Necropolises from the first half of the 9th century BC have given us grave goods in which typical biconical vases (photo 1), traditionally covered by a helmet for men and a bowl for women, and hut-shaped urns (photo 2) which contained the ashes of the deceased, appear.

From the end of the 9th until the beginning of the 8th century B.C., with the proliferation of medium and long-range trade and elements indicative of the establishment of a cultural (and political-economic) pre-eminence of Tarquinia, we witness the development of the unique, dark brown Villanovan ceramics which were decorated with engraved geometric motifs and created using the columbine or slow lathe techniques.

In the 8th century B.C., light-coloured Etruscan-geometric painted ceramics, decorated in oxide red or brown, became popular. The artefacts – mainly amphorae, onochoae, olpae, plates and saucers -, made with quick lathe-poured earth, present linear motifs, concentric circles, ovals connected with ‘S’-shaped lines, figurative elements such as fish, birds, a few quadrupeds and, more rarely, human figures. The use of the crater, a container used for mixing wine and water, became widespread in the last quarter of the century.

With the transition to the so-called Orientalizing phase, ceramics flourished as a result of intense commercial and cultural relations within the Eastern Mediterranean environment. Strong links are shown with the Greek colonial area of Campania, an essential crossroads for Euboic, Phoenician-Cypriot, Corinthian and Attic influences that enlivened, and modified, the local social and productive fabric.

This was the time of new and successful productions, such as bucchero, black-coloured pottery (the colouring is given by firing in the absence of oxygen) considered the ‘guiding fossil’ for understanding the international spread of Etruscan production. The most documented forms are related to the symposium: oinochae, kantharoi, kylikes and kyatoi.

The Orientalizing period is the period in which, according to tradition, Demaratus arrived in Tarquinia. He was a wealthy merchant from Corinth, who had become rich through frequent trade between Greece and Etruria. He was forced to leave his homeland with his retinue of skilled craftsmen for political reasons, to whom the Etruscans owe the transmission of various arts, first and foremost coroplasty.

Etruscan-Corinthian manufacture (photo 5), which developed thanks to cultural contacts with the Hellenic world, is of great significance.

The knowledge of the Greeks’ techniques, presumably shared by immigrant craftsmen, allowed for a better purification of the starting materials, the use of the fast potter’s wheel and more control when firing. The colour is light, the decorations, in dark brown or black, are zoomorphic: ducks, panthers, lions, deer and owls, interspersed with rosettes and painted and incised spots. There are often several orders of figures. The main forms are olpae and oinochoae.

The port of Gravisca played an important role. Having risen to prominence on the coast of Tarquinia between the Eastern and Archaic periods, its emporic sanctuary was opened to Greek craftsmen and artists. High-quality ceramics were produced and new decorative formulas were introduced. One such  example was Etruscan funerary painting, which, between the 6th and 3rd centuries B.C., experienced an exceptional artistic season, so much so that in 2004 the Monterozzi necropolis, a long hill that divides Pian di Civita from the coast and which is famous for its painted tombs, was listed as a Unesco site. The painters who frescoed the underground tombs often decorated the ceramics produced in the workshops.

The pediment of the Ara della Regina – a temple built in the area of Pian di Civita – is dated to the 4th century B.C.. It is decorated with an admirable terracotta plaque of Winged Horses in high relief (photo 6), which is considered a masterpiece of Tarquinian coroplastic art.

Tarquinia took a leading role in the clash between the Etruscan cities and Rome, but was definitively defeated in the first half of the 3rd century. In the field of ceramics, the production of sarcophagi and red-painted ceramics soon gave way to a production of everyday materials, which would continue over time, aimed, essentially, at satisfying local needs.

During the 18th century, interest in the Etruscans exploded. News of the Corneto ‘caves’ saw antiquity enthusiasts and travellers flock to Tarquinia. A great season of excavations was prepared, which triggered interest in the creation of Etruscan and Greek imitation ceramics. Antonio Scappini was a notable creator of these ceramics during the second half of the 19th century. His reproductions were purchased by prestigious national and international museums, as well as by collectors.

From the 1950s, the strong demand for imitation Etruscan objects prompted the flourishing of workshops whose products reached such levels of quality ‘as to lead to the temptation of counterfeiting’. In the early 1970s, a collaboration between ceramists from Tarquinia and the great Chilean artist Robert Sebastian Matta led to the Etrusculudens exhibition. This collaboration, in which research and experimentation matured, left a strong imprint on contemporary ceramics.