The second of the eighteenth-century Italian porcelain factories was founded in 1737 by the marchese Carlo Ginori (1702–1757) at Doccia, near Florence. Ginori sought the assistance of two men who had worked for the du Paquier factory in Vienna, and it is likely that porcelain was in production by about 1740. In the following year, Ginori obtained an exclusive privilege for the manufacture of porcelain in Tuscany. Due to the quality of the local supply of kaolin—a critical ingredient in the production of hard-paste porcelain—the porcelain made at Doccia was gray and slightly coarse, but the artistic level of Doccia's production more than compensated for its technical deficiencies.
This platter is one of three (06.372a–c) at the Museum decorated with a figure in exotic dress. This figure of a Turkish man is copied from a painting by Jacopo Ligozzi, which was based in turn on an illustration in Navigation and Voyages in Turkey, first published in 1576. The painted decoration is attributed to Johann Karl Wendelin Anreiter, a worker from the Du Paquier factory who aided Ginori in the founding of the Doccia factory. The precisely painted large flowers on the border and the distinctive palette of strong colors reflect the influence of the Viennese factory on Doccia porcelain.