Architectures for a plate from the series My Women

The drawing depicts a composition with imaginary buildings, with handwritten notes by Gio Ponti (1881-1979), including the indication ‘Architectural structures for Agata’. Agata is one of the nine female figures that make up the series ‘My Women’, a successful set of decorations for ornamental vases and plates in majolica, designed by Ponti between 1923 and 1927.  In the plates, each female figure was accompanied by a different architectural caprice, of which the drawing under examination is an example. 

The pairings indicated do not always correspond to those actually made. In this case, for example, a similar building, albeit with variations, is paired with Donatella on ropes, instead of Agata. Ponti himself would speak of the great impression he had “living, during the war, in the resting periods from the front, in Palladio's buildings, and with the possibility to see as many as I could”; many of his decorations for Richard-Ginori art ceramics, as well as the first buildings he designed in the twenties, confirm this inspiration.