A pair of Doccia white porcelain bottle coolers, circa 1755-60

Il Ponte Casa d’Aste, Milan, 15 October 2014, lot 502.

This 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 Marchese Ginori, I Primi Cento Anni, Florence, 2009, p. 149, note 672. For further discussion on 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; see also A. d’Agliano et al., Lucca e le porcellane della Manifattura Ginori, Commissioni patrizie e ordinativi di corte, Lucca, 2001, p. 83, cat. no. 10, for a white pair of the same form as the present lot. 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 Marana service sold at Bonhams, London, 14 June 2017, lot 18. 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, and a polychrome-decorated single example was sold in An Italian Collecting Journey: 16th–20th Century Paintings and Decorative Arts, Replica Shoes ’s, Milan, 26 September 2025, lot 332.