Sezzatini Firenze Gilt and Cream Florentine Serving Tray, c. 1975–2000

The Piece

A large Florentine serving tray with a shaped outline, a pale cream well, and a raised gilt border of fruit, leaves and blossom worked around the rim and gathered into a swag at each end.

The ornament is the piece. Pomegranates, apples and curling leaves stand in deep relief off the surface, undercut enough to throw real shadow, and the gilding sits over them so the high points read bright and the hollows go to a deeper bronze. Between the two fruit swags the rim runs as a plain moulded gilt band, which gives the eye somewhere to rest.

The well inside is finished in a soft chalky cream, lightly speckled, so the gold frames a quiet field rather than competing with one.

Turn it over and the whole back is gilded solid, edge to edge, which is not something a maker does unless they expect the tray to be picked up and looked at. The maker's paper label is still on it.

Where the gilding has chipped at the outer edge, a white gesso ground shows through underneath, which is the traditional preparation and the reason the relief reads as crisply as it does.

History & Provenance

The label reads SEZZATINI, Firenze, over a small view of a bridge, with MADE IN ITALY and HAND PAINTED beneath it.

Sezzatini is a Florentine tray works, based at Barberino Tavarnelle outside Florence on the road that the Italians call the Strada dell Orologio, the clock road. The firm describes what it makes as Florentine wooden trays decorated according to the traditional techniques of fourteenth century craftsmen, created and decorated entirely by hand, and it is a specialist rather than a general giftware maker. It carries over a hundred and fifty tray forms and adds new ones each year, which is a scale of specialisation very few decorative houses reach.

The technique is the old Florentine one and it is visible in the object. A wooden blank is built up with gesso, the ornament is modelled in relief, and the whole is laid with gold and then toned back. It is the same sequence used on picture frames and altar furniture, applied to a tray, and it is why the chip at the edge shows white rather than bare wood.

On dating, the firm gives the floor. Sezzatini marks fifty years of production around 2021, which places its founding at roughly 1971, so nothing carrying this label predates that. The paper label format, with the country of origin and the hand painted claim printed together, and the honest wear to the gilding at the edges and across the back, place it in the earlier decades of that run rather than the recent ones. Nothing here supports a tighter bracket and none is claimed.

What can be said flatly is that it is a real Florentine tray from a real Florentine tray works, not a gilt finish applied to an import. The gesso ground, the depth of the relief and the gilded verso are all things that cost money to do and are the first things left out when a piece is made cheaply.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

A gold tray is one of the few decorative objects that earns its keep lying flat. On an ottoman it corrals glasses and books and stops the surface looking abandoned. On a console it catches keys. On a dining table it carries candles and does the job a runner would otherwise have to.

The relief is what separates this from the flat gilt trays that turn up everywhere. Run a hand across the fruit and it is modelled, not printed, and under a lamp it throws shadow and changes as you move past it.

The cream field is the smart part of the design. An all gold tray fights whatever you put on it; this one gives you a neutral ground inside a gold frame, so a stack of books or a pair of glasses reads cleanly against it.

For a dealer, Florentine gilt with its label intact is easy stock. It photographs beautifully, it ships flat, and the Italian market has enough recognition that a customer does not need the technique explained before they want it.