Menshikov Palace Printing Shop

On 5 March, 2003, in the Menshikov Palace was opened a Printing Shop. The first print of the new Russian capital, St. Petersburg, was made by Peter Picquart as early as 1704. This initiated a tradition which still strives in Russian art.

It was in 1697 that on his visit to the Netherlands Peter I met the Amsterdam master Adrian Schonebeck and under his direction made the etching Orthodoxy Triumphant over Mohammedanism. In the early 1710s at the Czar's order was created the St. Petersburg Printing House where the print shop was transferred from the Moscow Armory. The Print Chamber of the Academy of Sciences was opened in 1725. In 1759, was created a special print class of the "Academy of the Three Most Glorious Arts". St. Petersburg in art is unthinkable without the excellent prints of A. Zubov, M. Makhayev, A. Ukhtomsky, S. Galaktionov, K. Beggow, A. Ostroumova-Lebedeva or A. Benois.

Carrying on the traditions of the St. Petersburg school of print, the Center for Graphic Arts of the St. Petersburg Union of Artists opened the Menshikov Palace Printing Shop in March 2003.

Engravings, prints and lithographs of the leading contemporary masters of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Alekseyev, Vladimir and Nikolay Sedyukov, Aleksey Reypolsky, Svetlana Zvonova, Mikhail Uspensky, Vladimir Menshikov and Rudolf Yakhnin, are displayed. The centerpiece of the exhibition is the Karl Krause manual printing machine made in Leipzig in the 1890s, still operated.

Visitors to the Menshikov Palace may see xylographs being made from plates put together from a multitude of small pieces of hard wood. All prints produced by the Printing Shop are original bearing authors' signatures. Due to a small number of copies (30 to 100), prints become accessible to an audience of art lovers.

Print prices are 48 to 300 rubles. Cards with reproductions of drawings or paintings are sold at 23-30 rubles.

High artistic quality and rich historical traditions allow the Menshikov Palace Printing Shop to sell genuine St. Petersburg souvenirs which may decorate homes or offices or be used as gifts.

Artist Nikolay Serdyukov introducing the printing machine

Printer's work presented

Manual printing machine
1890s
Karl Krause
Leipzig

Printing machine showed at work

Fresh print