A blend of past and present, each collection is an encounter between territory, art, designer and artisan. The decorations are drawn freehand, with colours applied by brush. New technologies blend with ancient craft.
The company was established in 2020 in Caltagirone, a Sicilian city known worldwide for its artistic ceramics. It was here that Nicolò and Fausto Parrinello gave life to the Ninefifty project, whose name evokes the temperature at which terracotta and lava meld with their glazes.
Growing up in the ceramic workshops of their father, Rosario Parrinello, founder of the Made a Mano brand, Nicolò and Fausto came into contact with earth, pigments and processes early in their lives. Between kilns and moulds, they learned to choose materials and transform and reinterpret them. Ninefifty's production results from research, experimentation and analysis of possible ways of working lava stone, terracotta and enamel, traditional Sicilian materials. Designed by Margherita Rui, the claddings have a shared feature. Like the enamels, Caltagirone and the history of art and architecture come together in a new way of conceiving design.
Ninefifty lava stone and terracotta tiles
Alfabeto, Tracce, and Teorema are the most iconic collections. "Alfabeto is a futuristic return to our city's ceramics tradition. Every mark left by the brush is a memory of our Scalinata or a ceramic column that evolves into something linear," say Nicolò and Fausto. "Tracce recalls our land's sensual and vivid colours. When they go into production, we always believe these colours will travel the world carrying traces of Sicily everywhere. The quality of the Teorema collection transforms us into architects of material. The shapes and arches of these tiles recall palace doors and entrances - invitations to discover Sicilian architecture'.The Alfabeto collection creates a decorative language where shape, colour and rhythm come together in an attractive wall tile. "When I designed Alfabeto, I wanted to recreate the rhythm of shapes and colours of Caltagirone ceramics only by abstracting the shapes from the figurative to sign-like and geometric," explains Margherita Rui. "Even the saturated tones synthesise the colours. They become signs in an alphabet that can be used to tell stories". Tracce tiles explore the brushmark left when colour is applied in a rush, with skilful precision. "Vibrant, pulsating and tactile colour is the key element - a hymn to contemporary Mediterranean colour". Teorema explores primary symbolism with essential and rigorous strokes executed by engraving enamelled lava stone. "These suspended, abstract landscapes of pure geometries originate in the history of Italian art from the last century," concludes Margherita Rui.
As manufacturers Nicolò e Fausto have decided to invest in a sustainable business strategy that extends from the products to their business structure. A short supply chain that lets have a good degree of control over raw material quarrying: high quality clays and lava stone quarried from Etna. In an oil mill, immersed in the Sicilian countryside, the leftovers from production are ground and mixed to create new powder mixes. Attention to the environment also passes through the collection of rainwater in special cisterns, where it is left to decant naturally and then reused in the production flows of lava and ceramics.
Ninefifty on ARCHIPRODUCTS
Ninefifty on ARCHIPRODUCTS
