Behind the scenes of the Ginori Arte x Ingrid Donat collaboration
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October 06, 2025
Behind the scenes of the Ginori Arte x Ingrid Donat collaboration
Ginori 1735’s latest collaboration with French artist and sculptor Ingrid Donat celebrates the House’s ties to art and craftsmanship.
Ginori 1735 has been an expression of Italian excellence for over three centuries. The story started in Doccia, a town near Florence: inspired by his passion for “white gold”, Marquis Carlo Andrea Ginori dedicated his life’s work to the pursuit of the perfect formula. In 1735, he opened a one-of-a-kind porcelain factory specializing in hard porcelain, renowned for its resistance, translucency, and extra-fine quality. Ginori 1735 quickly gained recognition for its fine sculptural porcelain figures and distinctive hand-painted pieces, evolving over the years into a true symbol of Italian luxury and creativity.
La Manifattura, Ginori 1735’s production facility, still makes porcelain authentically, just like 300 years ago. Molding, forming, glazing, firing, hand-painting… Ginori pieces can require up to 6-8 hours of craftsmanship, 5 different artisans, and more than 8 days to be completed.
A platform for artists over the ages
In the world of luxury tableware, Ginori 1735 stands out for its strong ties to the arts. Over the years, the House has tapped a number of renowned artists as artistic directors, each bringing their own distinctive take on Ginori 1735’s identity.
Iconic Italian artist Gio Ponti created some of the House’s most recognizable styles from 1923 to 1933, including the geometric Catene and Labirinto collections, a classic of 20th century Italian design. From 1946 to 1970, Giovanni Gariboldi, who started learning under Ponti, projected the art of La Manifattura into a more elegant and functional dimension.
His most famous collection, Colonna, exemplifies 1950s modernism, characterized by precise geometry and uncompromising practicality: each element is designed to be stackable, creating symmetrical compositions that can be stored compactly. This icon of Italian design, which won the prestigious Compasso d’Oro competition in 1954, was relaunched in 2024 in a new pastel version named Diva, an elegant and feminine reinterpretation of the emblematic modular shape.
In 2021, Ginori 1735 debuted Ginori Arte with the Reborn project curated by Frédéric Chambre, an art auctioneer and CEO of French auction house Piasa, in order to broaden the House’s creative horizons: by merging high craftsmanship with contemporary artistic reinterpretation, resulting in projects with a roster of renowned artists.
Ginori Arte x Ingrid Donat: the Maya service
For its latest collaboration, Ginori 1735 approached the French designer and sculptor Ingrid Donat, marking a new chapter of the Ginori Arte project. This exclusive tableware collection arises from a profound dialogue between the artist’s unique vision and the savoir-faire of La Manifattura, combining sculptural art and contemporary collectible design.
Ingrid Donat is known for her works that combine warmth, material strength and a holistic view of living spaces, using traditional techniques such as the scarification of bronze and the use of symbols. Instead of bronze, wood, parchment and textiles—the materials she uses in her sculptural practice— her decorative motifs take on a new dimension on the ivory-white porcelain Maya service, the collection she chose to reinterpret for Ginori 1735.
Each motif is the result of an artistic action that La Manifattura has skillfully interpreted and translated into a sophisticated and tactile collection: five sizes of sculpted plates (flat, soup, dessert and bread) as well as crystal wine glasses, polished silver cutlery and bronze accessories.
This unique collection, available to order in the Ginori 1735 flagship stores in Milan, Florence and Paris, brings together Ginori’s heritage of fine craftsmanship with the boundary-pushing vision of a contemporary artist, effectively redefining the intersection of art and design.
