Description
The Porcelain Museum is in the Casino del Cavaliere, a small villa on one of the highest points of the Boboli Gardens, behind Palazzo Pitti in Florence. Dinner services, teapots, vases and figurines tell how 18th-century Europe learned to make porcelain, until then a secret of China and Japan.
The pieces come from the great factories of the 18th and 19th centuries: Capodimonte, with eighteen figurines of Neapolitan working women and the Bear School group, Ginori of Doccia, France's Vincennes and Chantilly, Vienna and Germany's Meissen. Look out for a sugar bowl shaped like a turtle and a teapot shaped like a hen.
Many services were made for the new fashions of coffee and hot chocolate. Some pieces were gifts from other rulers to the grand dukes, many were collected by the House of Lorraine, but the largest group was brought by the Savoys after Italian unification, from the royal palaces of Parma and Piacenza.
The pieces come from the great factories of the 18th and 19th centuries: Capodimonte, with eighteen figurines of Neapolitan working women and the Bear School group, Ginori of Doccia, France's Vincennes and Chantilly, Vienna and Germany's Meissen. Look out for a sugar bowl shaped like a turtle and a teapot shaped like a hen.
Many services were made for the new fashions of coffee and hot chocolate. Some pieces were gifts from other rulers to the grand dukes, many were collected by the House of Lorraine, but the largest group was brought by the Savoys after Italian unification, from the royal palaces of Parma and Piacenza.