A Doccia porcelain large teapot and cover, circa 1745-1750

Sotheby's London, 6 October 1981, lot 34;

The Vivolo Collection, Cremona, sold Sotheby’s Milan, 13 November 2007, lot 200.

Vienna, Liechtenstein Museum, Baroque Luxury Porcelain, The Manufactories of Du Paquier in Vienna and of Carlo Ginori in Florence, 10 November 2005 to 29 January 2006.

C. Lehner-Jobst, A. d'Agliano et. al, Baroque Luxury Porcelain, The Manufactories of Du Paquier in Vienna and of Carlo Ginori in Florence, exh. cat., Munich, 2005, p. 229, cat. no. 37;

A. Biancalana, Porcellane e Maioliche a Doccia, Florence, 2009, p. 160.

This teapot is remarkable for its large size and for its unusual handle simulating a piece of twisted coral. Carlo Ginori, as Governor of Livorno, had been instrumental in starting up a coral fishing enterprise in the Tyrrhenian Sea. In 1738, the year after he founded the porcelain manufactory, he purchased his Cecina seaside estate from the House of Lorraine, which became a small port and the site of a small coral processing workshop. In 1747, Ginori proposed to merchants in Livorno the establishment of a company for coral fishing.¹

Contemporary to this venture, the combination of gold and red was introduced at the Doccia factory in its early first period, around 1745, and continued in production until 1765, according to the sale inventories that year, as cited by d'Agliano, op. cit., p. 37, who mentions a further piece decorated in the manner, a cup, in the Doccia porcelain museum at Sesto Fiorentino, inv. no. 1458. The relief decoration of prunus flowers seen on the present teapot is one of the earliest motifs adopted by the European porcelain factories, and reflects the influence of Chinese blanc-de-chine porcelains and red stonewares that were being imported into Europe in large numbers. A further beaker and saucer in this pattern and palette sold at Sotheby's Florence, 12 May 1982, lot 621; Two hexagonal tea canister applied with prunus, a direct copy of the Meissen form, were exhibited alongside the present teapot in Vienna, d'Agliano, ibid, cat. no. 39.

_{1.For further reading on the subject of Ginori and coral, see the paper by Oscar Pallme, Coral fishing in southern Europe between 1500 and 1800, 2021, p. 40.}