Brief History of Russian Porcelain

Peter the Great made every attempt to bring Russia into a modern era and having created the city named after him, he turned his many talents into developing a wide range of skills learnt whilst seeking the ‘tricks of the trade’ travelling throughout Europe. At almost seven feet tall,  Peter was  the Tsar that really started to create an artistic and cultural society in Russia. The founding and development of St. Petersburg in 1703 laid the foundations for a certain aristocratic class that would be able to commission great works of art and thereby directly influence the building of a large and dynamic porcelain industry.

Whilst Peter attempted to create porcelain production in Russia, it was not until 1744, nearly 20 years after his death that anything positive happened, even though there had been attempts by other people.

During the reign of Empress Elizabeth the German Konrad Hunger was employed to start a company producing porcelain. However it was one of his Russian students who is credited with finally discovering the secrets of the white gold. Dmitri Vinogradov produced many items for the Empress and other people at court. The earliest records about the Imperial Porcelain factory start from 1751 and it took a relatively short time to create complicated items and good quality paintwork. Vinogradov carefully documented his work and methods which still have a big influence on today’s porcelain.

After the death of Vinagradov  in 1758 , there became a close contact between the Imperial Porcelain Factory and the newly founded Academy of Arts. So a more artistic style developed . By the early part of the next century it was a more patriotic, Empire style that was more notable.

By this time there were many other porcelain factories in Russia, most notably the Gardner factory set up by an Englishman, Francis Gardner and the older ceramic factory of Gzhel had also developed the art of making porcelain.

The period after the Napoleonic wars was naturally a time to glorify the men, the regiments, the uniforms of that period. The Yusopov factory commenced in 1814 and specialised in commission works for the Yusopov family, the tsar and the Court. (It was a later member of the family, Prince Felix Yusopov who assassinated Rasputin in 1916.)

It was during the 1840’s that the sculptures of trades, theatre, masquerade and street people were developed, sadly this phase soon ended mainly due to the influences from French fashion and a more European style developed.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century most of the smaller porcelain factories had either disappeared or been taken over by a larger concern. So much so that only a few big names remained. The family of Kuznetsov being the largest owners.

The Imperial factory had been helped by the Royal Copenhagen Factory, through  which it now was able to develop an even more western style of porcelain with a similar underglaze painting style to that of the Danish company.

The Revolution in 1917 changed much of Russia and society. The porcelain factories were nationalised and the revolutionary phase with it’s politically correct designs and propaganda pieces, especially from the former Imperial factory that was to become the Lomonosov Porcelain Factory in 1925, named after the famous scientist, who had been a friend of Dmitri Vinagradov. This Soviet period produced a great many talented  sculptors and painters.

Since then Russian and Soviet porcelain has developed many forms to which the names of Dulevo, Polenne, Kiev, Verbilki (Dmitriev - formerly owned by M.S. Kuznetsov and  earlier, the Gardner Factory), Riga , Gzhel, Novgorod, Kornakoba and Lomonosov are some of the better known one’s in the West.

It must be pointed out that in Russia there were not so many very wealthy people, and except for the items commissioned by that small group of people, most porcelain production was made and designed for the masses. Basic tableware, cups and saucers, dinnerware, etc were the main items made as cheaply as was practicable.  Naturally if we visit the Hermitage Museum or the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg today we will see only the more exclusive porcelain. For most collectors it is unrealistic to expect to find such items. therefore it is primarily two items any serious collector might find, that we will we try to concentrate on. This will focus on the large range of animal sculptures  and figures that are so popular today, made to be politically neutral by sculptors and painters who eventually became frustrated with the censorship of the Soviet system. In recent years there has been a great interest in Russian porcelain, in particular that made in  Soviet ‘Made in USSR‘ times before 1992.

Some attention will be paid to the factory marks on the bottom of most pieces, approximate valuations and a range of other items and curiosities in the hope of encouraging a more wide knowledge and subsequently to that, of enabling the collector  to acquire a larger and more enriched display in their cabinets.  

After the revolution it became ‘safer’ for porcelain sculptors and artists to create designs that were ‘neutral’ and non political in the eyes of the revolutionaries or more usually to actually promote the ideas of Communism using propoganda designs .

PHW 2002