Case study · Ceramics · Tableware05 / 46

Smalto

Smalto is a small studio in Faenza that throws plates, bowls and cups by hand for restaurants and homes. The site lets you put your hands on the clay before you order.

Project: Smalto — ceramics studio website
Industry: Ceramics, tableware, HoReCa
Scope: Web design · Build · Motion
Built with: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Three.js
Year: 2026

Smalto — A site for a ceramics studio in Faenza, with a bowl you can shape on a spinning wheel.

Overview

A bowl on the wheel, right in the first screen.

The brief

Smalto sells two ways: to chefs who order 300 plates in their own size, and to people who want four bowls for the kitchen. Both need to see that this is real stoneware made by hand, not a catalogue of renders. The site had to feel as tactile as the pieces and still make ordering simple.

What we did

The first screen is a live 3D bowl turning on a potter's wheel. Drag the clay and the walls go up or out, switch between bowl, cup, vase and plate, and change between five glazes with speckles and a rim where the glaze breaks. Further down one cup goes through all 23 days on the same wheel: wet clay, trimming, drying, bisque, glaze and the final firing, where it shrinks by 13% next to a ruler. For restaurants there is a plate builder with size, rim, glaze and quantity that gives weight, price and lead time. Around it: a giant wordmark that assembles from slices, pills that roll like a cube on hover, a live ticker with the kiln countdown in Faenza time, a counter of pieces fired this year and a sample box form.