The incredible quantity of documents and ceramic materials which have come to light recently in Umbria, at least from the Middle Ages up to the present, provide evidence of this region's importance in ceramic art and allows us to construct a critical of greatest iconographic interest, which were successful on the market, among collectors, and more recently in ceramological studies.

Two great phenomena of extraordinary technical-decorative intuition have characterized Umbria in the field of Italian ceramics: the use of white in the glaze in Orvieto in the Middle Ages, and the techniques of luster decoration in Deruta and Gubbio during the Renaissance. These discoveries went hand in hand with the strong artistic development taking place in ceramic workshop in the wake of the Umbrian painting school by Perugino and by Pinturicchio. For its continuity, uninterrupted for at the least seven centuries, Deruta still remains the greatest centre for the production of artistic majolica in Italy. Deruta is a small town located south of Perugia on a hillock dominating the Tiber Valley.

Probably the art of ceramics in Deruta had its origins and was developed by the favourable circumstances for the presence "in loco" of a first special clay. The first news of a flourishing vase corporation operating in Deruta goes back to 30rd December 1336. The style of Deruta decorated ceramics, starting from the medieval pottery painted in manganese brown and copper green in the style known as "archaic majolica", evolved in the late 1400s into the stylizations of works, the large " ceremonial platters", vases and cups on tall stems, drug jars, with the refined decorative style by the " compendario" style that finds maturity in the grotesque and calligraphic decorations on drug jars, stem cups and cake stands, also with relief decorations.

In the 1700s the floral style and "lambrique" patterns were employed in an original manner in dinner sets, sometimes in a monochrome blue, taken from porcelain motifs and in keeping with the tastes of the period.

Historical and political events and changing tastes led to a considerable decline in the quality and quantity of the wares produced in Deruta, as well as in other pottery towns, in the 1800s. it was not until the end of the century that various individual artists and men of culture would provide the impetus for a recovery which generated the large numbers of potteries active today.

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•       Historical notes on ceramics in Deruta