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Russian Imperial Porcelain Manufacturer - XX century
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A stage-by-stage reconstruction of the oldest enterprise in Russia, as well as introduction of new technologies in manufacturing porcelain allowed increasing significantly and diversifying the assortment of the articles manufactured there.
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XVIII century · XIX century · XX century · XXI century |
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Soviet porcelain
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Kazimir Malevich, sculptor, artist. A plate with supreme decoration, 1923. Porcelain, painting |
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NICHOLAS II porcelain and Russian modern Propaganda porcelain
The porcelain with its snow-white surface, architecture monumentality, sculpture plasticity and painting fascination, which, by the XXth century, had manifested sophisticated taste of a limited group of people, became the first , brightest and vivid proclaimer of the revolutionary ideas. In the meantime, it was a favourable material for implementing a new trend in art, so-called suprematism.
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In the time of the last Russian Emperor, Nicholas II (1894-1917), due to the novelties of the previous period, both technical and technological state of the factory was perfect.
The richness of art technologies was the pride of the factory, and later on, in the period of the First World War favoured the development of the new branches of chemical and electrotechnical porcelain manufacture. Among the large orders, there were Alexandrinski and Tsarskosel'ski table ware sets, placed by the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna who supervised the factory after the fiasco it suffered at the World exhibition in Paris, 1900. By the order of Nicholas II, the factory manufactured a series of battle-piece plates depicting the troops in uniforms of the Alexander III period and the sculpture series "Peoples of Russia" designed by P.Kamenskii. This series continued undertakings of Catherine II and favoured the idea of securing of Russian power. The characteristic feature of the figures is their ethnographic authenticity.
Since the middle of the 1900s, the cooperation between the Factory and the artists of the WORLD OF ART Association, K.Somov, K.Lanceret and S.Chekhonin, had contributed to neoclassics development.
The chain of Russian revolutions in the beginning of the XX century divided for a long time the life of Russia into two historical periods. For the previous 150 years the Imperial Porcelain Factory developed in the trend of European King's and national manufactures, while the revolution of 1917 in Petrograd had changed the situation radically.
In addition to the achievements in the field of art porcelain, the Factory succeeded in manufacturing chemical and technical porcelain, it was the first to manufacture optic glass, too. And this is natural that in 1925 to celebrate a bicentenary of the Russian Academy of Science the Factory was named after the great Russian scientist M.V.Lomonosov.
With the beginning of cultural development period, in the 30s, the art laboratory , first in our country, is open at the Factory. Under the guidance of N.Suetin, K.Malevich's follower, the factory's team develops a new style of Soviet porcelain, which is in line with the socialistic everyday life. N.Suetin, being a talented artist and supervisor, organically implemented suprematic ideas of world-of-art decorativity and realistic mapping of nature. The peculiarities of art of the painters, such as A.Vorobievski, I.Riznich, M.Mokh, T.Bezpalova, L.Protopopova, L.Black, A.Yatskevich S.Yakovleva and others, predominated for a long time the Leningrad porcelain image featuring purity and softness of shape, vivid material whiteness, specific images of decoration and brightness of colours.
The target of socialist realism to the solution of ideological problems and an official style of state orders in 1930 to 1950 have not become of an ode character, thanks to a many-year experience and highest professionalism in manufacturing ceremonial vases , paintings and portraits.
In the 60s, the years of "Khrushchov ottepel", the art turned over again to the mottos of the 20s, such as "Art - to everyday life" and "Art - to industry". After pompous and extremely decorative Stalin's period, the interest in white porcelain aroused again, along with the work on shape and constructive conciseness of geometrical volumes. Those years were marked by an active work of some artists and sculptors, such as E.Kremmer and A.Leporskaya, V.Semyonov and S.Yakovleva, creative work of genuine master V.Gorodetskii is being developed. The artists who graduated in the 50s from the Leningrad All-Union Art & Industry High School named after V.I.Mukhina actively show their worth. Among them are S.Bogdanova, K.Kosenkova, N.Pavlova, N.Semyonova, V.Zhbanov, P.Veselov. The leading masters of decorative-applied art N.Slavina and I.Olevskaya widened the ideas about porcelain by creating multi-article huge compositions.
Stage-by-stage reconstruction of the oldest enterprise, implementation of new technique and technologies of porcelain manufacture allowed increasing and diversifying the assortment of the products. First in Russia, the Lomonosov Porcelain Factory has developed the technology and arranged industrial production of thin-walled alabaster (bone) porcelain articles, characterized by higher whiteness, thinness and transparency. This development of the group of specialists was awarded the USSR State Prize in science and technology, and the artists themselves got a possibility to widen their creative range in developing and decorating new forms from this marvellous material.
In the 70s the Factory takes part in home and international art-industrial exhibitions. The creative team is the leader in producing remarkable works.The well-known Soviet expert in art N.Voronov calles the products of that period the standard of art and high quality. In 1980 The Lomonosov Porcelain Factory is awarded the prestigious international Prize "Golden Mercury, "to appreciate the contribution into the development of industry and international cooperation".
Careful usage of the inheritance , continuous development and permanent innovation of art traditions are the integral part of the Petersburg porcelain art school. This is obvious in the works by T.Afanasieva and G.Shoulyak, N.Petrova and O.Matveyeva, M.Sorokina and S.Sokolova et al. Each of them has developed their own approach to creating porcelain articles, what allows a great variety of products labelled by "LFZ" to be picturesque and emotionally evocative. As far as the Factory itself is concerned, its characteristic feature has been preserved, i.e. it continues to be the plant of porcelain art.
As stated by L.V.Andreeva, an expert in Russian art culture history, whose investigations on porcelain have been based on here, the Russian porcelain of the recent decades with its romantism faced to national culture in the full scale is one of alive and creative phenomena of European art culture of the second half of the XX century. And Lomonosov porcelain is one of the most attractive and bright sides of it.
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