A Doccia porcelain bottle cooler, circa 1760

Enrico Questa Collection, Turin, sold, Sotheby’s, Milan, 21 March 2005, lot 268.

This grand mould-cast model of a bottle cooler was inspired by contemporary silver and is based on an engraving by Giovanni Giardini, specifically a design for an incense burner, plate 62 from the volume Promptuarium Artis Agentariae, ex quo centum exquisite studio inventis delineatis...(Italy, 1720). A volume of Giardini's prints was in the Doccia factory archive as mentioned by A. Biancalana, Porcellane e Maioliche a Doccia: La fabbrica dei Marchesi Ginori: I primi cento anni, Florence, 2009, p. 149, note 672. For further discussion of the form, an illustration of a wine cooler of the same form, cast with the Ginori arms, and a reproduction of Giardini's engraving see A. d'Agliano in Brittle Beauty: Reflections on 18th-century European Porcelain, London, 2023 pp. 188-189, figs 3 and 4. Coolers of this form were included in the famous armorial service commissioned for the Marchesi Francesco and Laura Marana, Genoa. A pair of coolers from the service sold at Bonhams, London, 14 June 2017, lot 18; and a further cooler from the service, alongside another decorated in the same pattern as the present example, sold at Christie’s, London, 6 December 2007, lot 13, illustrated in G. Morazzoni and S. Levy, Le porcellane italiane, Milan 1960, vol. II, tav. 199c. An early example of the form in the white, with a moulded armorial relief of three stars on a bend, sold at Christie’s, Geneva, 3 December 1982, lot 36.