Florence, Italy, c 1575-1600
Ceramic known as Medici porcelain, cobalt painted decor 
Sèvres, Cité de la céramique 
© RMN-Grand Palais (Sèvres, Cité de la céramique)/Jean Popovitch

This Florentine dish is a rare example of artistic emulation coming from exchanges between artistic traditions of different civilisations of the world. This dish in blue and white colours produced in Florence at the end of the 16th century is indeed characteristic of the first European attempts to imitate Chinese porcelain. The beauty and solidity of porcelain vases imported from China have prompted European potters to innovate in trying to find the secret technique of that white, soft, translucent, vitreous and sound material. The choice of a decoration in white and blue shows China’s inspiration for this dish. The secret of porcelain – the use of kaolin clay – will be discovered quite late by Europeans, at the early beginning of the 18th century. The so-called Medici “porcelain” is actually a “soft paste” without kaolin.