Platter (one of a set) ca. 1745 Doccia Porcelain Manufactory Italian The first factory in Italy to produce hard-paste porcelain was founded in Venice in 1720 by Francesco Vezzi (Italian, 1651–1740), but this enterprise was short-lived and closed in 1727. A far more ambitious and successful hard-paste porcelain factory was established ten years later outside of Florence at Doccia by Carlo Ginori (Italian, 1702– 1757), and it became one of the most significant European factories during the eighteenth century. The Doccia factory, as it is commonly known, continued after Ginori’s death and remaine

Platter (one of a set) ca. 1745 Doccia Porcelain Manufactory Italian The first factory in Italy to produce hard-paste porcelain was founded in Venice in 1720 by Francesco Vezzi (Italian, 1651–1740), but this enterprise was short-lived and closed in 1727. A far more ambitious and successful hard-paste porcelain factory was established ten years later outside of Florence at Doccia by Carlo Ginori (Italian, 1702– 1757), and it became one of the most significant European factories during the eighteenth century. The Doccia factory, as it is commonly known, continued after Ginori’s death and remained under family control until merging with a Milanese firm at the end of the nineteenth century, but Doccia’s period of greatest artistic innovation took place under Carlo Ginori’s directorship from 1737 to 1757.[1]Considerable recent scholarship on the Ginori factory has underscored both the political circumstances in Florence at the time the factory was established and the importance of Ginori’s role in the factory’s founding and early growth.[2] The death in 1737 of the last Medici to rule Florence, Grand Duke Gian Gastone (1671–1737), shifted control of the region to the House of Habsburg-Lorraine in Vienna. With the transference of governance, court patronage within Florence ceased, causing a subsequent decline in artistic activity.[3] Within this changing environment, Ginori was successful in establishing a porcelain factory lacking the active support of a local court or ruler, which is in contrast to the majority of porcelain enterprises founded during the eighteenth century in ’s keen interest and active involvement in the factory’s production are well documented. Trained as a chemist, he provided the technological expertise in the area of pastes, glazes, and enamels. It appears that Ginori began experimenting with ceramics as early as 1734,[4] but it was during a trip to Vienna to acknowledge the new rulers of Florence in 1737 that he me

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