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In 1844 the Imperial Porcelain Factory in St Petersburg, founded in 1744 on the orders of Empress Elizabeth, reached its 100th anniversary. To mark the occasion, Emperor Nicholas I gave orders for the opening of a museum of Russian porcelain attached to the factory. Precursors of this notable event were the exhibitions of classic specimens of the factory's production held in 1837-38. These were a great success with the public and were accompanied by the sale of porcelain items. The museum of Russian porcelain developed along with the factory. In the 19th century it was located on the ground floor of the old building of the Imperial Porcelain Factory that is a rare example of industrial architecture from the late 18th century. At first the "cabinet of samples of manufactured products" was enlarged by porcelain items that represented Russia at prestigious international and world exhibitions. At the Great Exhibition of 1862 in London these included the Romanov service with portraits of Russian rulers and a view of the Romanov boyars mansion in Moscow that had been designed by Vivant Beauce, as well as the large panel entitled "Siberian Flora", painted by the finest master of flower-painting Fedor Krasovsky, and a glass tondo featuring an exact copy of Raphael's Alba Madonna. To form the museum collection many items produced at the factory in the 18th and early 19th centuries were selected from the storerooms of the Winter Palace and other imperial residences. Among them was a small white experimental cup produced by Dmitry Vinogradov, the Russian pioneer, in the early years of his work aimed at discovering the secret of porcelain. In the reign of Alexander III (1881-1894) it became the practice that two original copies of each new piece be produced and one of them given to the museum. The celebrated Raphael Service, in the development and approval of the design for which the Tsar was personally involved, was to be the factory's most expensive product. It took 20 years to create. The rich ornament on this service was borrowed from the frescoes adorning the Raphael Loggias in the Vatican. The specialized museum of Russian porcelain, connected directly with its production, served as a school of craftsmanship for the factory's sculptors and artists, providing them with a unique opportunity to study the art of porcelain on site. The display of the teaching museum was organized according to the principle of "open storage" with the fullest possible showing of all available material. A visit to the Imperial Porcelain Factory in the 19th and early 20th centuries usually included an interesting tour of the museum and the factory's artistic workshops at the end of which honoured guests received some porcelain trinkets as a souvenir and left their comments in the "Book of Exalted Visitors to the Factory". During the First World War the museum's stocks were evacuated to Petrozavodsk, while its premises were used as a military hospital. Under Soviet power the museum's fate followed that of the factory and the country as a whole. It was moved several times and its exhibition area was steadily reduced. During the Second World War the factory again suspended production, while the museum's priceless collection was evacuated to the Urals far from the front. Since 1975 the museum was located on the top floor of the new administrative building of the Leningrad Porcelain Factory (as it was then called). On 18 November 2005 the Lomonosov Porcelain Factory was given back its
historical title: the Imperial Porcelain Factory. |
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