Italy is a country famed for its world-class clay pottery.
But now curators of the Museo Della Merda, Italy’s ‘S**t Museum’, have come up with a new kind of crockery.
They’ve invented ‘Merdacotta’ – a new kind of baked clay made from Terracotta and cow manure.
The Museo Della , translated as the Museum of S**t, describes itself as the first ever facility dedicated to the study of excrement. Founded by Italian farmer Gianantonio Locatelli, the museum opened this week on the ground floor of a medieval castle in the village of Castelbosco near the city of and boasts 220,000 lbs (100,000kg) of waste.The museum displays pots, plates and furniture made from ‘Merdacotta’, a cross between Terracotta and manure.The museum, which has a dung beetle as its logo, also boasts artworks, from paintings in liquid excrement, to an extract from Luis Bunuel’s film ‘The Phantom of Liberty’.
The Museo Della , translated as the Museum of S**t, describes itself as the first ever facility dedicated to the study of excrement.
Founded by Italian farmer Gianantonio Locatelli, the museum takes up the ground floor of a medieval castle in the village of Castelbosco near the city of and boasts 220,000 lbs (100,000kg) of waste.
‘The idea came from the need to take advantage of animal dung in an ecological way,’ Mr Locatelli said.
‘We managed to transform it into something useful.’
Over his various farms, 3,500 cattle produce 55 tonnes (55,000 kg) of milk a day to make Grana Padano, a hard cheese comparable to Parmesan.
They also generate 150 tonnes (150,000 kg) of waste.
Left-over faeces is combined with Tuscan clay to make ‘merdacotta’ bricks, hexagonal and rectangular tiles, flowerpots, plates or jars.
The clean-lined, simple Merdacotta creations are ‘a revolutionary product… halfway between plastic and Terracotta’, Mr Locatelli said.
The objects take pride of place in the museum, which has a dung beetle as its logo.
The insect uses dung balls as both a food source and a breeding chamber.
The museum also boasts artworks, from paintings in liquid excrement, to an extract from Luis Bunuel’s film ‘The Phantom of Liberty’.
‘Excrement is seen as something vulgar, nauseating, as the most ignoble matter,’ said Mr Locatelli, who intends to ‘rehabilitate the word and transform opinions of it across the board’.
The Merdacotta collection won a prize at Milan’s design fair last year, justifying his bet to ‘turn s**t into something graceful’.
And while the farms have been hit in recent years by a sharp drop in the price of milk, Mr Locatelli said he can rely on his unusual sideline to keep his business buoyant.
‘I can only thank s**t,’ he said with a chuckle.
The rest of the excrement is collected in stool digesters, immense vats where bacteria transforms the manure into methane.
The methane is then burned to produce electricity, which is sold by the farm.
The daily faeces output produces three Megawatts an hour, enough to turn on the lights of a village of 3,000 to 4,000 people.
The water used to cool the engines heats to 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit), which is then used to warm the farm, stables and digesters, which must be kept at a constant 40 degrees.
Mr Locatellia added that he was planning to bring a line of fertilisers called ‘Merdame’ to supermarkets across the world.
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