Cooler

An antique cooler, made of porcelain tulip-shape decorated (“a tulipano” in Italian) , realized by the Florentine Ginori manufacture, over the mid- eighteenth century.

The Ginori manufacture began its activity in 1737 in Doccia, not far from the ancient village of Sesto Fiorentino, in the villa that Marquess Carlo Ginori bought at the beginning of the same year, from Senator Francesco Buondelmonti.

The artistic development of the Doccia Manufacture is particularly peculiar and is considered a true pattern of the different historical and cultural situations alternating in Tuscany history  over a period of about one hundred and fifty years, from the fall of the last Medici to the years of Florence as a Capital city.

Carlo Ginori’s descendants continued to be the owners of the manufacture and directed it until 1896, when the merger with Richard’s Ceramics Company in Milan took place.

Over the centuries, Ginori’s production has seen various changes in style and decoration, passing from the “oriental” to the “bouquet” decoration (“a mazzetto” in Italian)  then going on with the “Tulip” and “Cocquerel” decorations (tulipano and galletto in Italian) , every time innovating techniques taste and refinement in porcelain glazing.

During the second half of 1740, the so-called Tulip decoration was created, but it was only its second and third production period to encounter a right appreciation for its  artistic pattern. The decoration consists of a large stylized peony, and not a tulip as it was then called, painted in shades of iron red, with slightly gilded flowers and leaves all around.

This cooler belongs to the production of that period. It was certainly part of a larger table set, and is in excellent condition, representing one of those rare pieces, of a particular shape, in the antiques market; this remark refers to the fact that there were no more than two coolers in a complete table set.