Sesto Fiorentino

The ceramics tradition in Sesto Fiorentino

The history of modern Sesto ceramics starts around 1737, with the foundation of the Ginori Manufacture by Marquis Carlo Ginori. In the following few decades the company production line kept constantly growing (in 1774 it employed more than 100 workers). The Manufacture was known throughout Europe for its majolica and porcelain of great artistic value.
The handicraft features of the production remained unchanged for a long period. It was only in the last four decades of the 1800s that the Manufacture underwent an industrial transformation. The number of employees and of items made grew steadily, up to 1,400 workers and 4 million pieces. However the artistic quality of the production remained high. The Manufacture was awarded prizes in many international exhibitions where it had put on display its best production: precious ‘egg-shell’ china, 16th-century design majolica, crockery and industrial ceramics.

After the acquisition of the company by the Richard group in 1896, its industrial development was pushed forward. The artistic production however maintained an important role amongst the Manufacture activities. During the Liberty Age the company, now called Richard-Ginori, produced items of great value.
During the 1920s and 1930s the novel series designed by Gio Ponti set a new stylistic standard for artistic craftsmanship. The collaboration between designers and producers would become more and more frequent in the following decades. Some of the best Italian designers still cooperate with the firms in the Sesto district today.

The first handicraft workshops were established, often by former Ginori painters and modellers, between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.
The Colonnata Ceramics Society was founded around 1891; the Industrial Society for the Artistic Majolica around 1896. The latter was taken over at the beginning of the 1900s by one of its founders, Egisto Fantechi.
The Federal Ceramics Cooperative, the Ernesto Conti Manufacture and the Alfredo Ciulli Artistic Ceramics were all established between 1900 and 1915.
Other workshops began their activity in the 1920s: Barraud & Messeri, Carraresi & Lucchesi, Alma Manufacture, S.A.C.A.
On the eve of World War II there were about thirty ceramics workshops. Some of them were still following the late 1800s stylistic precepts; others had managed to take up the stimulus of the contemporary trends.
The great development of the handicraft production came, however, only after the war; once more it coincided with a time of crisis and change in the Richard-Ginori manufacture.

These days in the Sesto district there are about 100 companies carrying on the ancient ceramics tradition in their workshops.