Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Ceramics, Room 139, The Curtain Foundation Gallery

Plate

ca. 1870 (made)
Artist/Maker
Ginori (manufacturer)
Place of origin
Doccia (made)

The Ginori company, founded in 1735 in Doccia near Florence, built its reputation on imitations of Italian lustred wares and maiolica of around 1500. Under the Marchese Lorenzo Ginori Lisci (d.1878), director from 1848, the pottery produced designs reflecting more varied and more contemporary tastes but also continued making its successful lustred wares, such as this plate. In 1896 the pottery came under the ownership of Giulio Richard who already owned other factories. Combined, the new company was known as the Società Ceramica Richard-Ginori.


Object details

Categories
Ceramics
Earthenware
Maiolica
Object type
Plate
Materials and techniques
Tin-glazed earthenware, painted in cobalt blue and red lustre
Earthenware
Tin Glaze
Painted
Glazed
Lustre
Brief description
Plate, tin-glazed earthenware painted in blue and red lustre, made by Ginori family, Doccia, Italy, ca. 1870
Physical description
Plate or plateau, tin-glazed earthenware, decorated with concentric bands of vine leaves around a central heraldic emblem, in red lustre.
Dimensions
  • Diameter: 27cm
Marks and inscriptions
A crown and ' 53-A' in blue and 'Ginori manufactory at Doccia'
Object history
Bought from the art dealer William Campbell Spence, Florence in 1877. William Campbell Spence (1849-1927 living at 6, Via Micheli, Florence, Italy) was the son of William Blundell Spence (1814-1900) a painter, art collector and dealer.
Subjects depicted
Vine-Leaves
Emblems
Summary
The Ginori company, founded in 1735 in Doccia near Florence, built its reputation on imitations of Italian lustred wares and maiolica of around 1500. Under the Marchese Lorenzo Ginori Lisci (d.1878), director from 1848, the pottery produced designs reflecting more varied and more contemporary tastes but also continued making its successful lustred wares, such as this plate. In 1896 the pottery came under the ownership of Giulio Richard who already owned other factories. Combined, the new company was known as the Società Ceramica Richard-Ginori.
Bibliographic references
  • Frescobaldi Malenchini, Livia. Rucellai, Olivia. The Revival of Italian Maiolica: Ginori and Cantagalli. Firenze:Edizioni polistampa, 2011. pp 161,165,209. ill. ISBN 978-88-596-0975-9
  • Frescobaldi Malenchini, Livia ed. With Balleri, Rita and Rucellai, Oliva, ‘Amici di Doccia Quaderni, Numero VII, 2013, The Victoria and Albert Museum Collection’, Edizioni Polistampa, Firenze, 2014 p. 144, Cat. 129 129. Plate in Hispano-moresque style with fake Morelli arms circa 1877 maiolica with lustre glaze diam. 27 cm; h 4 cm on the back a crown / 53-A (in blue) inv. 712-1877 purchase: William Campbell Spence, £ 3 The decoration, with a few variations, is based on a 15th-century original from Valencia which has the coat-of-arms of the Morelli family of Florence. At the time the plate was made the original was in what was then the South Kensington Museum (V. & A. inv. 1760-1855; see RAY 2000, n. 185, p. 86 and SPALLANZANI 2006, fig. 97, p. 312) and was illustrated in FORTNUM 1873, p. 56. For a similar Ginoriplate with a different coat-of-arms, see CONTI 1980, n. 648. The museum often purchased copies of antique plates for educational purposes. The South Kensington Museum was created with the objective of educating the taste of the public and of the manufacturers by exhibiting antique objects of exceptional quality. One of the systems that was used for this purpose was the so called Circulating Museum, founded in 1853, which sent both original works and modern reproductions to the various cities in the Kingdom (MORRIS 1986, note 4 and RUCELLAI 2005a, p. 30). The purchase date of this plate by the Victoria & Albert Museum gives us a useful chronological reference for the mark that has just the crown without the word Ginori (BALLERI, RUCELLAI 2011, p. 120- 121) and for the introduction of the Hispano- moresque style at Doccia. In fact, we do not know of any pieces of this kind that can be dated with certainty before this one. The presence of the letter “A” instead of the decoration number is also interesting. The letter belonged to an identification system that was used for lusterware which, considering the rarity of documents that mention it and objects that are thus marked would appear to have been used for a very brief period of time. In the Registro delle commissioni of the Paris Exhibition in 1878 (AMD, arm. 3) there is a list of many different objects with decorations that are identified in this way. The objects in these lists suggest that it referred more to a category than a specific decoration. Tiffany & Co. of New York, for example, ordered four plates type 53-A; the description of one of these was: “a white background, ruby lustre, with little blue leaves and a shield in the centre” which might correspond to the plate shown here. Later they started using a parallel numbering system for the lustre ware (BALLERI, RUCELLAI 2011, p. 120-121 and cat. 8).The same coat-of-arms and a similar decoration was also used on a ewer (model 136, see Prodotti about 1905, plate XXIII) and a vase with spiked handles (model 137, see CAPUTO 2010, III, p. 133). O.R. Bibliography: O. Rucellai, in THE REVIVAL OF ITALIAN MAIOLICA 2011, p. 208-209, cat. 30
Collection
Ceramics Collection
Accession number
712-1877

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Record createdJune 24, 2009
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O282277/plate-ginori/
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