Gio Ponti and Richard-Ginori

Manifattura di Doccia, Prototipo del candelabro per il servizio da tavola del Khedivè Ismail Pacha, 1874-1875

2017

Autori/Authors: Paola D'Agostino, Tomaso Montanari, Livia Frescobaldi Malenchini, Matilde Gagliardo, Oliva Rucellai, Lorenzo Falchi, Claudio Vanni, Maresa D'Arcangelo. Fotografie di Marco Bucco, Leo Bastreghi e Lorenzo Mennonna.

Text for the catalogue of the exhibition, Fausto Melotti l'incertezza, Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, 2015

Color Culture and Science, 2018

Gio Ponti (1891-1979) was one of the first Italian architects who actively dealt with industrial design, combining the classical tradition of craftsmanship with the request for modernity. Mainly known for his work as an architect, he was also a painter and decorator and he paid attention to colour throughout all his life, promoting its importance in all of the sectors of design through his educational journal activity. This paper focuses on the role of colour in Ponti’s work, “surveying” his complete collection (1941-47) Lo “Stile” nella Casa e nell’Arredamento, also known as “Stile”, the magazine he created after his disagreement with the publisher of “Domus”, a previous periodical he had directed since its foundation in 1928 and continued to direct after Stile’s closure. The purpose is to verify the consistency between the role of colour in Ponti’s design work and his writings. He began his professional activity decorating ceramics, where colour is substantial. Then he devoted his activity to furnishing accessories, domestic interior and building elements, in the significant years between World War II and the reconstruction period (1940-1959). His educational aim was to spread a new aesthetic concept. The magazine was addressed above all to ladies, to whom Ponti attributed a main role in characterizing the house, recognizing their attention to art and culture besides a spontaneous ability to create functional and elegant domestic environments where colour joins a note of cheerfulness. The objective were different from the other contemporary architecture periodicals and the magazine was new both in contents and graphics, where the communicative power of drawing was enhanced through a widespread use of colour.

2018

List of books, papers and catalogue entries published by Oliva Rucellai

Mondi a Milano. Culture ed esposizioni 1874-1940

All images of enslaved men and women, however abstracted in allegory or antique nudity, derive force from an awareness of slavery as a social reality. This applies even to Michelangelo's idealized figures for the tomb of Pope Julius II, and is explicitly acknowledged in Pietro Tacca's 'Quattro Mori' from the monument to Grand Duke Ferdinando de' Medici in Livorno, with its Turkish and Moroccan captives modelled on individual galley slaves in that city. This essay supplies the history of this monument from the author's archival work (previously published in: Pietro Tacca a Livorno. Il Monumento a Ferdinando I de' Medici, Comune di Livorno, 2008)and describes the reduction of Tacca's colossi from important late Renaissance monumental sculpture to the domesticity of the small furnishing bronze and porcelain bibelot.

From the Introduction: Alla metà degli anni Cinquanta del Novecento, le indagini condotte dal marchese Leonardo Ginori Lisci nell' archivio di famiglia e sfociate nel suo pionieristico volume Le porcellane di Doccia (1963), diedero avvio agli studi sulla Manifattura di Doccia rivelando un particolare interesse per l' aspetto scultoreo Venendo nello specifico delle mie ricerche, vorrei precisare che nella Manifattura di Doccia con il termine modello' si intende un soggetto che viene impiegato per la realizzazione delle forme in gesso a tasselli' necessarie alla sua traduzione in porcellana. Esso è caratterizzato da rotture' volontarie delle quali tratteremo nel paragrafo dedicato ai modelli e può essere stato acquisito dalla manifattura oppure realizzato al suo interno. Lo stesso termine, però, viene utilizzato negli inventari dei modelli di Doccia, per descrivere sculture che servono come modello' da copiare. Se ne deduce che nella manifattura non esista una distinzione tra i modelli' , dai quali si sono originate le forme, e gli archetipi' , che sono stati impiegati come fonte d' ispirazione

2018

Autori: Tomaso Montanari, Livia Frescobaldi Malenchini, Matilde Gagliardo, Paola D'Agostino, Oliva Rucellai, Gabriella Renier Filippone. Fotografie di Marco Bucco, Leo Bastreghi e Giacomo D'Aguanno.

con cadenza annuale studi originali, riguardanti la storia del Palazzo e le collezioni museali, e insieme rende nota l'attività del Museo nel campo della ricerca storica, della conservazione e dell'educazione. La rivista è coordinata e curata dallo staff del Museo ed è aperta a contributi esterni, da indirizzare alla redazione.