Continuité et innovation dans la fabrication de la céramique à Florence entre XIX et XX siècles

Il saggio analizza le trasformazioni nella produzione degli oggetti in ceramica nel contesto fiorentino attraverso la produzione della fabbrica dei marchesi Ginori.

Abstract: Technical innovation, cultural continuity: the ceramic manufacture in Florence between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – The ceramic manufacture in Florence is a case of technological change characterized by phases of relative stability alternating with periods of high change. In this evolution demographic factors, as well as environmental changes or external influences play a distinctive role. I tried to analyse the conditions under which the international market give directions to the local productive activities, but also to consider how the internal variables to a particular social group contribute to create new equilibriums. In the case of ceramics in Florence, in 1737 the first major installation of a modern factory confirms the meeting of a traditional culture (the founder, the Marquis Carlo Ginori was a noble Florentine), with a modern European technical culture: technological innovation in this case derived from direct contacts with foreign countries, whence the majority of qualified personnel originated, while the less skilled workforce was directly derived from agrarian possessions of the Marquis. After 1861 (the Unification of Italy), a new technical development is accompanied by a strong adherence to Florentine cultural context. While in Milan manufactures Richard opens the path of technological rationalization in a “modern” style for a mass market, the Ginori factory in Florence remains tied to a quality market. Technological innovation is still accompanied by a strong link with tradition, which is also expressed in the recall of the Renaissance’s style. Factory express in a good way the process of upgrading and modernization of traditional activities and crafts that characterizes Florence and the “Florentine product” in this historical period. In the early twentieth century there will be another turn, with the merge between the Ginori and Richard factories, which determines a new technical change. Altogether, the example of the Florentine ceramics could provide a case study to analyse the complex relationship between technological breakthroughs and cultural continuities in the period from the first to the second industrial revolution.