The assortment consists of four dinner dishes with a smooth edge, and two deeper dishes with a hemispherical bowl shape. They all rest on a low ring foot obtained by lowering the bottom. The dishes show a rich peony decoration made with the colors of the Imari palette: blue, iron red in two tones and gold. From the center, a thin blue fillet frames the main composition: a watercolor crag of earth in iron red, with a tahiu rock, a peony branch with an open corolla and a thin sinuous branch with leaves and a minor peony. Next to these, a thinner and wavy branch supports small multi-petaled flowers and finally there is an isolated red flower accompanied by large leaves to complete the decoration. The brim is occupied by four groups of flowers with peony corollas and leaves.
Some small variations in details characterize the Milanese production, as evident in this assortment: the more or less thin background of the smaller leaves and the sometime uncertain use of gold in the corollas.

For an accurate study and for particularly pertinent comparisons of this ornament, see the examples preserved in Milan in the Applied Arts collections of the Castello Sforzesco and attributed to the manufacture of Pasquale Rubati. They date to around 1770 (Raffaella Ausenda, a cura di Musei d’Arti Applicate, Tomo II, Milano 2001, pp. 309-313 n. 310).

Maolica and porcelain production in the eighteenth century belonged mainly to the great royal families or in any case to the noble families who made the manufacture of ceramic works a source of prestige. In Milan, under Maria Teresa of Austria, the time period witnessed a real opening to new industrialists who, by virtue of the privatizations granted by the government, assumed a real business risk, giving life, albeit not without conflict, to flourishing factories and to production which was among the most elegant and most requested at the moment and which still today remains object of collection.
In Milan in the 18th century, two majolica factories were active. The first was that of Felice Clerici, from 1745, and the second was opened by Pasquale Rubati in 1756, in competition with Felice, for whom he had been a worker. Upon Rubati’s death, in 1796, the enterprise was continued for a few years under his son Carlo.

Bibliography:

• R. Ausenda (a cura di), Musei e Gallerie di Milano. Museo d’Arti Applicate. Le ceramiche.
  T. II, Milano 2000.