History

For centuries, porcelain was an exotic material imported from China. At the dawn of the 17th century, its composition and the techniques for its manufacture were completely unknown in Europe. Marquis Carlo Ginori was among the first in the West to undertake the artistic, scientific, and economic endeavor of producing the so-called “white gold.” 

In addition to being a leading figure on the political and cultural scene of Tuscany in his time, Carlo Ginori was personally committed to revitalizing the local economy by promoting new productive activities, such as the breeding of Angora goats, coral fishing, and the cultivation of exotic plants.

With the same spirit, around 1735, he began experiments to produce hard-paste porcelain and research to obtain kaolin, the mineral indispensable for its production. In 1737, he founded in Doccia, in the village of Sesto Fiorentino, a manufactory that has never ceased its activity since. 

To manage it and train the workers, he called upon Giorgio delle Torri (for the kiln) and Carl Wendelin Anreiter (for the decoration), who had already worked for the porcelain manufactory of Claudius Innocentius du Paquier in Vienna, and entrusted Gaspero Bruschi with coordinating the modeling. It was thanks to their help that Carlo Ginori overcame the countless technical difficulties of the experimental period.

The marquis personally took charge of the artistic direction. To do this, he also gathered a very important collection of sculptural models to translate into porcelain. This collection of models, which since 1754 has been displayed inside the manufactory along with the best samples of the production, constitutes the original nucleus of the future museum, which remained until 1950 in the rooms of the Villa of Doccia and its splendid gallery frescoed by Vincenzo Meucci and Giuseppe Del Moro.

The eldest of the founder’s three sons took over the management of the manufactory when he was still twenty-three. Under Lorenzo, the Manifattura di Doccia took on new characteristics. While his father had approached the porcelain venture with a pioneering spirit and cultural and artistic ambitions, Lorenzo was primarily concerned with cost rationalization and the problematic supply of kaolin. Technical innovation was accompanied by an ever-increasing diversification of products and decorations.

Under his direction, the factory became such a profitable enterprise that, when Lorenzo’s brothers found themselves excluded, they tried in various ways to start another one in direct competition. In 1779, Giuseppe, the youngest, managed to persuade some Doccia employees to leave the old manufactory and open a new one in San Donato in Polverosa, on the outskirts of Florence. The attempt failed quickly but revealed the dangers inherent in every phase of succession and led Lorenzo to request a special privilege from Grand Duke Ferdinando III of Tuscany so that, in the future, the manufactory could be inherited exclusively by the firstborn.

Born in 1788, Carlo Leopoldo inherited the manufactory at the age of three. While waiting for him to reach maturity and complete the studies that would prepare him to lead the factory, it was his mother, Francesca Ginori née Lisci, who managed the operations together with a Council of Guardians. 

Thanks to his travels to the most important European porcelain manufactories, Carlo Leopoldo succeeded in introducing cutting-edge technical innovations to Doccia for his time. He is particularly credited with the invention of a new type of four-level kiln (later known throughout Europe as the ‘Italian-style’ kiln), which fired various types of ceramics simultaneously, allowing a significant fuel saving. 

In the social field, Carlo Leopoldo promoted the establishment of schools and welfare institutions for employees, who had become about 200 by the early 19th century. Among these was the Mutual Aid Society, established in 1829 and still active today. Regarding production, a characteristic of this period is the ever-increasing import of first-quality French kaolin, used to produce the so-called ‘superfine’ porcelains, that is, those with the finest paste and decoration. 

The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of great transformations for the Manifattura di Doccia. Lorenzo Ginori Lisci, owner from 1838 to 1878, found himself at a crucial crossroads in the history of the family business: to maintain the original artisanal character of the manufactory or to take the path of the industrial revolution. The marquis chose the latter, and his factory grew at an impressive speed, increasing from 250 employees in 1864 to 1,368 employees in 1893. The promoters of this remarkable development were Lorenzo Ginori himself and Paolo Lorenzini, brother of the author of Pinocchio and director of the manufactory from 1854 to 1891. Despite the successes achieved, a series of adverse circumstances, including Lorenzini’s death in 1891 and the unfavorable economic situation, made it increasingly difficult for the Ginori family to continue the work they had begun. 

Lorenzo Ginori Lisci is also responsible for transforming the exhibition of eighteenth-century models and artifacts into an organic collection explicitly defined as a ‘museum’ and opened to the public starting in 1864. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the collections took the name ‘Musei di Doccia’: alongside the artifacts produced by Ginori from its origins onwards was the Museo Ceramico, a comparative collection of products from Italian and foreign factories. 

In 1896 the Ginori family sold the factory to Richard, then the largest Italian ceramics industry. From the merger arose the Società Ceramica Richard-Ginori, headquartered in Milan with three production plants in San Cristoforo (Milan), Pisa, and Doccia. Augusto Richard (1856-1930) continued the drive toward industrialization started by Lorenzo Ginori Lisci, and in a short time Richard-Ginori achieved absolute dominance of the national market and a leading position abroad as well. The various plants enabled them to produce all types of ceramics, from the most economical earthenware to artistic majolica, up to electrotechnical porcelains.

From an artistic point of view, the merger with Richard meant the advent of Art Nouveau. Entrusted with updating production to modern taste, the artistic director of Doccia, Luigi Tazzini, interpreted the new style mainly inspired by French models. 

The museum collections remained the property of the Ginori heirs, who lent them free of charge to the new management. The collection kept its historic location and the exhibition layout did not undergo substantial changes but continued to be enriched with the best of the new productions.

The development plan on which the company’s strategy was based for much of the twentieth century was outlined by the founder Augusto Richard as early as 1887: acquisition of competing factories, continuous modernization, specialization of plants, rapid adjustment to changing demand.

In the first half of the century, the driving sector was the electrotechnical industry. To the plants in the Florence area of Doccia and Rifredi, the SPE of La Spezia was added in 1927 and the F.I.L. - Fabbrica Isolatori di Livorno in 1939. During this period, the production of art ceramics, marginal in terms of turnover, gained prestigious recognition both in Italy and abroad thanks to the artistic direction of the young architect and designer Gio Ponti. Stylistically, the Ponti decade (1923-1933) is one of the most glorious periods for Richard-Ginori. The quality of the design remained very high even with Giovanni Gariboldi, his assistant and then chief designer of the factory’s Artistic Studio from 1933 onwards. 

During the Second World War, thanks to the collaboration and supervision of the Soprintendenza alle Belle Arti di Firenze, the museum’s most precious works were packed and transferred to safe locations.

From the 1950s, growth mainly involved the production of sanitary ware and tiles, for which two newly built plants were designated: one in San Cristoforo, operational from 1958, and one in Gaeta, inaugurated in 1964. A new, ultra-modern plant was also established in 1950 in the Sesto Fiorentino plain with the declared intention of making serial production more efficient and mechanized, while reserving the Manifattura di Doccia for the artistic sector. However, the announcement of the definitive closure of the historic site was not long in coming. In 1954, a long phase of bitter trade union struggles began, resulting in a partial reduction of the planned layoffs, but the closure of the historic manufactory could not be avoided.

In 1950, the first decree for the notification of the museum collection was issued, recognized as a complex of exceptional artistic and historical interest pursuant to Law 1089 of 1939.

In the 1960s, the expansion of the Richard Ginori group reached abroad as well. In the United States, a new company was established for the marketing of products, and in France Richard Ginori partnered with Cérabati for the production of tiles. Prestigious stores opened in Paris and New York. In 1965, the merger with its historic rival, Società Ceramica Italiana di Laveno, brought with it the project for the new Chieti plant, whose inauguration in 1969 crowned the group's upward trajectory.

After the closure of the historic Manifattura di Doccia site (around 1957) and the agreement reached with the Ginori heirs for the transfer of two-thirds of their collection to Richard-Ginori, a new, state-of-the-art building was constructed for the museum, located next to the Sesto plant and specially designed by architect Pier Niccolò Berardi.

Starting from the early Seventies, the company’s balance sheet began to show a strain in the capital-labor ratio, with an increase of nearly 8% in labor costs. The response to the difficulties was once again to innovate, mechanize, and, where necessary, close factories. The first closure, in 1972, affected the Mondovì soft earthenware factory, which had been acquired in 1897. Marginality losses continued in the following years, and the merger with Società Ceramica Pozzi (which took place in 1975) was not enough to stop the group’s gradual downsizing. Among the many factories in the group, the only one still active today is the one in Sesto Fiorentino, dedicated exclusively to the production of high-quality porcelain.

In 1995, the Pagnossin group acquired the production branch of Richard Ginori, and in December 2001 also won the bid for the museum, which was reopened in 2003 with a renewed setup. In 2012, a new notification decree was issued, extending the protection also to historically significant materials preserved in the factory and introducing the pertinential link between the collections and the building designed by Berardi.

In 2013, the bankruptcy of Richard Ginori led to the sale of the production activities to  Kering group and to the closure of the museum. 

In the years following the bankruptcy of Richard Ginori, the support of the Associazione Amici di Doccia proved particularly valuable, having organized exhibitions and publications on the collections, funded restoration campaigns, and kept the institutions' attention alive regarding the museum’s future.

Equally decisive were the public demonstrations, spontaneously promoted by the citizens to loudly demand safeguarding of the extraordinary common heritage preserved by the museum, as well as those carried out by the scientific community, culminating in the major exhibition “La fabbrica della bellezza” (Musei del Bargello, 2017), curated by Tomaso Montanari and Dimitri Zikos, and the result of a dense network of participation from Italian and foreign institutions.

Acquired by the Italian State in December 2017, the museum is currently closed,  awaiting completion of renovation works. 

Since 2021, the Fondazione Museo Archivio Richard Ginori della Manifattura di Doccia has been active, established by the Ministry of Culture, the Tuscany Region, and the Municipality of Sesto Fiorentino to preserve, study, communicate, and exhibit to the public the extremely rich collection of ceramic artifacts and archival documents of the museum, and to make its heritage a truly common good, accessible and inclusive.