Porcelain

Porcelain from China and Germany had been known in Russia for centuries due to trade relations with foreign countries and private travel. But porcelain production became possible in Russia only in the 1740s as the result of work done by talented Russian scientist Dmitry Vinogradov, who discovered the secret of porcelain production and began its industrial manufacture.

Some words about history of Russian and Soviet porcelain.

Francis Gardner, an English timber merchant, settled in Russia in 1746 and, after twenty years in the timber trade, founded, on March 7, 1766, Russia’s first privately owned porcelain factory near the village of Verbilki, the Dmitrov uezd, Moscow gubernia.

Archives and surviving porcelain samples give a full case-history of the earliest Russian porcelain undertaking.

The history of Soviet porcelain, faience, and glass is also illustrated by the exhibits of the History Museum. This period is opened by a small but sufficiently impressive collection of Soviet agitation porcelain of 1918-1923, which enables one to take a closer look at the art of the early years of Soviet power and feel the entire diversity of the impact produced by the October Revolution on the Russian fine arts.

Soviet "agitation” porcelain is an important and vivid phenomenon in the history of Russian decorative applied art. Brought into being by the October Revolution, it has become an art document of the epoch. Its political and aesthetic qualities are so high that it become an object of study and collection when it had not yet become part of history in the true sense of the word.

Porcelain production in the Ukraine began at the end of the XVIII century. Specimens of old Ukrainian porcelain from the Korets, Baranivka and Horodnytsky factories of the beginning of the XIX century and from the Volokytyne factory of Chernihiv Region, which are preserved in the Museum, illustrate the high art of the serf craftsmen who worked at these enterprises.