About one hundred and fifty years later, or in 1735, the Marquis Carlo Ginori established a manufactory at La Doccia, near Florence. The enterprise of the founder was so great, manifesting itself in the introduction of the chemist Wandelein as director, and the importation of material from China, that in a few years the Doccia porcelain had become famous. The earlier pieces bear a close resemblance to the Chinese. The artists of Doccia excelled in modelling, and many of their groups are beautifully executed. It is unfortunate that from an early period of the existence of the workshop its artists should have engaged in imitation. After following Chinese models they turned to Sèvres, and then to Capo di Monte. More lately, Doccia has won an unenviable notoriety by its spurious imitation of old majolica and the wares of Luca della Robbia. Early in the last century Doccia became possessed of some of the moulds of Capo di Monte, and as the Doccia mark does not appear upon the pieces made from them, a wide opening was offered for fraud. It is worth noting, however, that it is by its copies and imitations that the Doccia manufactory reached its greatest financial success. The success of the counterfeit has destroyed the genuine, and the artistic is overshadowed by the commercial. In Venetia, porcelain was made at Venice and Le Nove. The history of the manufacture in Venice is somewhat obscure. Early in the sixteenth century--and, therefore, before the Medicean ware was produced--experiments, the success of which cannot now be measured, were made by a Venetian artist. He seems, after making a few pieces, to have relinquished the enterprise for lack of support and patronage. His story is thus told: “There was an old potter in Venice about 1504-1519, whose name is unknown, of whom, in fact, we know nothing except from a few notes discovered by the Marquis Campori among the relics of the Duke Alphonso I. of Ferrara, but whose name ought to be blazoned in gold as the first European who made porcelain. In 1504 the Duke was in Venice, and his book of expenses shows an item of two liri and a fraction, paid for a piece of porcelain. Fifteen years afterward his ambassador in Venice wrote him a letter, sending with it a plate and bowl of porcelain, from the ‘master,’ from whom the Duke had ordered them. And the ambassador goes on to say that the master declined to take more, as his experiments cost him too much time and money; and, further, he declines to accept an invitation of the Duke to remove to Ferrara and make porcelain there, pleading that he is too old, and does not want to leave Venice. Enthusiastic collectors imagine that a few specimens to which they can assign no other origin are works of the old Venetian, but there is no satisfactory evidence that any of his work remains.” In the absence of any relics of this ancient Venetian to substantiate his claim to the invention of a true porcelain, the honor will probably continue