The Richard Ginori Porcelain Museum is located in Sesto Fiorentino, in a building next to the plant and to the 'Botteguccia', namely, the factory outlet.

The Museum holds a rich selection of the antique porcelain production that, traditionally, has always been manufactured at Doccia, near Sesto Fiorentino.

The year 1954 was that of the relocation to the current  premises.

The porcelain factory was founded in 1735 by Marquis Carlo Ginori, a man with a vast knowledge of art and a far-sighted business sense, who knew the experiments made under the patronage of  the Medici family for producing soft-paste porcelain.

The Doccia Factory has known periods of authentic splendour, increased and perfected by successive contributions, both technological (fundamental, that of Richard, who was  Swiss) as well as artistic (like that of Giò Ponti, art director at the factory from 1923 to1938).

The Museum exhibits in a rational manner and with modern criteria in large, well-lit  rooms; in the museum's showcases are displayed, one after the other, the most prestigious pieces of the collection, from its origins to modern times: starting from the large porcelain pieces in which Carlo Ginori reproduced the baroque sculpture of Foggini and of Soldani Benzi (17th century), and the classic statuary of the grand-ducal collections (such as the Medici Venus), to bas-relief trays or to Orientalesque figures,  to the monumental fireplace in white and blue ceramic of 1754.

In particular, inside the Museum there is a  permanent exhibition, Omaggio a Venere, (Homage to Venus), fulcrum of the exhibition and jewel of the collection, the translation into porcelain of the Medici Venus, which introduces the theme of  antiquaria to the production of the Doccia Factory.

In addition to the Venus, the exhibition proposes other ancient iconographic types of the goddess which in the eighteenth century were similarly translated into porcelain by the Ginori Factory.

Even the production of the following centuries, ( precious and highly-decorated nineteenth-century vases and  tableware, sinuous shapes of the 'Liberty' period and dishes  made according to 20th-century avant-garde design), is abundantly represented in the rich display, which is accompanied by a specialized library with books pertaining to the history of porcelain, as well as drawings and prints used as models for decorations.

Visit the Museum's website for information on its opening hours and special initiatives:  www.museodidoccia.it