The oven is from Four Grand-Mere in France; it is the F950-B which means it has a 95cm interior and the inside of the dome is brick. The dome is two pieces excluding the arch, and the bottom is also two pieces, plus the firebrick for the actual floor. The exterior of the dome is Chamotte refractory concrete. It came with two rolls of insulating blanket materials, and we will be adding to that and to the base also - that will be something for which we will solicit advice from this forum when we are ready to proceed. I've done most of the research but that's not my comfort zone, it's my husband's. He's not much for computer forums, but will be joining me online at some point to learn from the experts here.
Performance and durability, quality of materials, and ease of installation were all considerations, of course. One additional thing that was really important to us for the inside installation was that the interior of the oven be brick, purely for esthetic reasons. Staring into a concrete dome just doesn't have the same feel inside the house, for us. That really limited our choices. We are local to both Mugnaini and Forno Bravo, and we visited both of them a couple times. We also (just for the "what the heck" of it) contacted a few of the Italian companies for quotes. We looked very seriously at the Cirigliano Forni import because I have a good impression of it from Tony's in SF, and because they offer a "core" version that would have been a more reasonable solution than a fully-complete Italian imported dome, and would work for our install since the oven itself (exterior) will be hidden. We got an initial quote that stretched our budget but we were going to make it work, though the logistics of moving the core which comes in one VERY HEAVY piece was worrying my husband a lot. Then we got to the ordering and discovered that they'd made an error in the original shipping quote, and the cost of shipping had tripled. At that point one of the members of this forum suggested we look at the Four Grand-Mere ovens, and it turned out that we had a distributor less than half an hour from us. The logistics of moving and installing the FGM oven was far more appealing to my husband, and the price was within our budget. The FGM distributor turned out to be just the nicest and most helpful couple and they demonstrated the oven for us and made it an easy decision, so the whole thing just came together.
I've attached a photo showing the seam in the dome, and a couple showing the interior - these photos are all of smaller ovens than the one we bought, they are his display and one he had dismantled when we originally visited.
