Many dinner services, tea and coffee sets were made to order for the imperial household and for other members of the nobility in St Petersburg, and now form part of the Hermitage's rich collection of over 15,000 pieces of Western European porcelain. The wide variety of objects - among them many unique pieces - from the most important manufactories and the high artistic standard of their decoration make the collection a delight to both specialists and ordinary visitors to the museum.
Meissen porcelain occupies an important place in the collection. Of particular rarity are pieces from 1720 to 1730, a period associated with then chief painter J.G.Herold. The collection includes a great variety of Meissen statuettes, including figures and groups designed by the leading sculptors , J.G.Kirchner, J.F Ebelein and particularly J.J.Kaendler. The pride of the collection is the large Berlin Dessert Service with table centrepiece, sent by Friederich II as a present to Catherine II.
The Hermitage also has a large collection of wares from other German factories, such as those at Hoechst, Frankenthal, Nymphenburg and Thuringia.
Austrian porcelain is represented by Viennese wares of the 18th to first third of the 19th centuries. Deserving of special note is a large service with coats-of-arms of so-called du Pacquier period and the Cobalt Service, which Joseph II presented to Tsarevich Pavel Petrovitch in 1786.
French porcelain of the first half of the 18th century is represented by the Saint-Cloud, Chantilly and Mennecy-Villeroy factories, with a superb selection of Sevres and Vincennes wares. The famous Green Service (1756) and the Cameo Service (1778-1779, commissioned by Catherine I), continue to inspire admiration today. Objects from the Sevres manufactory continued to arrive in St Petersburg during the 19th century, among them some extremely interesting pieces such as the Egyptian Service sent to Alexander I by Napoleon during one of their periods of alliance.
Private Paris manufactories were very active in the late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries, and the Hermitage's large and highly valuable collection of porcelain from this period has examples from Dihl et Guerhard, Nast, Darte, Feuillet and other centers.
English ceramics are represented by the Wedgwood, Bow, Derby, Chelsea and Worcester factories, which produced tableware and statuettes as well as snuffboxes, patch boxes, needle cases, flasks, seals and other items. The Dessert Service from the Coalport factory (sometimes attributed to Daniell), a gift to Nicholas I from the English Queen Victoria, is an outstanding example of mid-19th-century English ceramics.
The Hermitage also has a select assortment of Italian, Spanish, Danish, and Swedish porcelain of the 18th to 19th centuries.
The collection of items in the Art Nouveau style is small but contains some exquisite treasures, such as a vase with foliate decoration, and bisquit figurines of dancers after models by the sculptor Agathon Leonard van Weideveldt, which were made at Sevres.
