Elisabetta arranged for one or two highly trained young women potters from Germany to be working at the Il Poggio ceramica studio all the time.
I don't know what bait she used--free rent in her splendid old Tuscan villa maybe--maybe some cash too--I never asked--but there they were happily at work every weekday in the ceramica studios of the place.
I learned a lot about clay work looking over the shoulders of these nice young women--and they enjoyed my untrained free and easy clay work style too, I think.
One of these--shall I call them girls?--had a cute idea. She showed the rest of us how to make little clay bees and every day we cranked out a few just for fun.
She threw a clay hive which held a couple of dozen bees at a time and all these bees and their hive were duly dried, bisque fired, glazed and final fired again and we used the bees as gifts for the guests of the B+B and the very rare shoppers who visited the ceramica.
They reminded me of the little green fired clay scarab beetles which are so popular in Egypt. All the tourists pick up a few very cheap on the street and the museum guards at the big Cairo museum are forever whispering and showing you their "Psst! Rare, precious and expensive..." antique fakes.
I expect--I hope--a few of these cool little Il Poggio Memorial Bees are still flitting around the world.
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