White Gold: three centuries of Ginori porcelain
When the Richard-Ginori porcelain factory first announced they were having financial troubles, my mother declared a day of mourning, and we had to order pizza. They officially declared bankruptcy in 2013 after leaving a scar in the suburban area of southern Milan, where the 1870 factory suddenly shut down, and the whole city rejoiced when […]
When the Richard-Ginori porcelain factory first announced they were having financial troubles, my mother declared a day of mourning, and we had to order pizza. They officially declared bankruptcy in 2013 after leaving a scar in the suburban area of southern Milan, where the 1870 factory suddenly shut down, and the whole city rejoiced when someone finally decided to do something in that area. As such, it’s no wonder when one of the most beloved house museums in Milan decides to dedicate an exhibition to Ginori’s porcelains and their three hundred years of history.
The Museum
The Poldi-Pezzoli is one of the many noble houses in Milan that were converted to open museums, and it hosts an impressive permanent collection from furniture to the armoury, from oriental objects to textiles, up to an incredible amount of over 300 paintings, including your casual Botticelli, a famed dame by the Pollaiolo, and a grand amount of stuff from Bernardino Luini that’s particularly close to my heart for my marginal involvement in the exhibition at Palazzo Reale in 2014.

The Exhibition: from Carlo Ginori to Gio Ponti
The exhibition focuses on the factory in Doccia, founded by the Marquis Carlo Ginori in 1737 in Doccia, a town a few kilometres from the ancient village of Sesto Fiorentino, where the Marquis bought a villa in extension to his family’s estate. The factory started operating in July 1737, overseen by one Francesco Leonelli borrowed from Rome.
The first porcelains were highly experimental and came from the maquis’ knowledge of alchemical and chemical texts, his expertise as a chemist and his close friendship with people like Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti, one of the most famous botanists of his time.
As a result of tireless research into porcelain, the Marquis himself wrote a booklet entitled Theory of the Ingredients Suitable for Making Porcelain, noting down his experiences and experiments in the factory, alongside very personal entries on his expectations from the factory, his anxieties, and the criticisms of contemporary chemical and alchemical texts.
The initial experiments concerned mostly majolica, but on 6 July 1739, we have the first documentation of the attempt to make porcelain. The material will become mainstream in the factory thanks to the contribution of Joannon de Saint Laurent, a specialist from Lorraine, who collaborated with Carlo first and his son Lorenzo later.
The first porcelains made in Doccia are from around 1740 and they are painted cups decorated by the chief decorator of the manufactory, Johann Carl Wendelin Anreiter von Zirnfeld. He himself took them to Vienna, and donated them to the future Grand Duke of Tuscany Francesco Stefano di Lorena. With this homage, Carlo Ginori was hoping to obtain from the Grand Duke a privative for porcelain production in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, which eventually took place on March 3rd, 1741.
The Early Years
The factory distinguished itself on the European scene for producing large porcelain copies of antique sculpture and for porcelain translations of bronzes by late Baroque sculptors active in Florence, and the Grand Tour travellers went crazy about them.
Some of these masterpieces are exhibited in the first room, large pieces primarily intended for console table decorations and dessert table settings.
Aside from a personally unimpressive Venus, the first two groups that will catch your attention are the Atlas Holding the Globe from the galleries of Palazzo Madama in Turin, compared to the Hercules Holding the World by Ferdinando Tacca, from the collections of the Princes of Liechtenstein, and the porcelain Dancing Maenad compared with the bronze Amphitrite from the Studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici. These two groups are a testament to how the Ginori porcelains weren’t simple copies, but reinterpretations of classical pieces that often changed the subject: Amphitrite, the goddess of the seas and wife of Poseidon, becomes a dancing follower of of Dionysus, the goddess’ shell and coral become a tambourine.
Amongst these classical reenactments, we couldn’t miss a reproduction of the Laocoön group, both in bronze and porcelain. As you might remember from the room dedicated to the subject in the recent exhibition dedicated to El Greco, the discovery of this statue had a tremendous impact on the imagination of the contemporaries, and it’s no wonder that the artists and engineers at the Ginori factory decide to reproduce it faithfully, without reinterpretations or without taking too many artistical liberties.
As the video upstairs will explain to you, the porcelain work is a veritable masterpiece in engineering, with concealed lodging for supports meant to prevent parts from falling before the porcelain was cooked and invisible mendings where pieces had to be assembled.
Eclectism
The second room (yeah, the exhibition only consists of two rooms, and I confess I was a little disappointed by its size), is dedicated to contaminations: the production moves away from classicism and explores other frontiers. To symbolise this period, the exposition proposes some large vases made for international exhibitions and the fabulous table service in neo-Egyptian style commissioned by the Khedivé of Egypt Ismail Pasha and created around 1872 on designs by Gaetano Lodi, which doesn’t renounce to Japanism and Michelangelo’s references.
Go Ponti’s Art Direction
In 1896, the factory expanded and merged, becoming the Società Ceramica Richard Ginori with headquarters in Milan, which added the factory in San Cristoforo sul Naviglio to the Factory in Doccia. Gio Ponti became artistic director in 1923, and stayed on for ten years. During these years, design sprang forward into modernity by taking a humorous twist influenced by avant-gardes and metaphysics.
Some of the items he designed are still part of the current collection, now under the broad hat of Gucci: false architectural perspectives of a vase remind us of De Chirico, while decorative objects such as the tiny book of cartomancy wink to other masters like Fornasetti. The carnival is often present, as you can see in the Harlequinesque decoration of items such as the tortoise and the couple of elephants,
His works on display include two exceptional Ciste made especially for Fernanda and Ugo Ojetti, now owned by the Poldi Pezzoli Museum. The inspiring works won the Grand Prix at the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, and they are the perfect summary of classical and modern, sumptuous and irreverent as it will be typical of Gio Ponti’s artistical direction.
A 2020 book, much more comprehensive than what exposed at the Poldi Pezzoli these days, provides a more comprehensive overview of the ceramics Ponti designed during his tenure: not only he contributed to modernising Richard Ginori’s production, bringing to a conservative creative environment like Florence’s a great variety of new shapes and motifs, but he allowed the pieces for playful contaminations drawing from a repertoire influenced through his travels, his reading, his interest in Greek and Roman archaeology or contemporary art.
Already a founder and director of the famed magazine Domus, he was involved in all aspects of the factory’s life, starting from communication: he assumed the role of an ante litteram press office and cultivated relationships with journalists and critics.
He was also concerned with product pricing. During the development of the modernist Inkwell with Coloured Architectures in 1925, for example, we have testimonies of his concern for the saleability of the object, and Ponti questioned that the price seemed very high compared to other pieces with richer and more complex decoration.