Decorated with sickles, hammers and prophecies of a quick bright future, porcelain of the first years of October is usually called propaganda. We decided to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the revolution and remember what the porcelain campaigned for in Russia, China, Italy and France.
In the first months after the revolution, a new team of artists headed by Sergei Chekhonin came to the State Porcelain Factory in Petrograd (hastily renamed from Imperial; in 2005 this name was returned to him). In 1918, the “Chekhonins” received their first order from the Bolshevik government – to make “busts of revolutionary leaders and utilitarian decorative items with revolutionary slogans.” According to Lenin’s propaganda plan, the symbols of the new government were to be placed everywhere. Even matchboxes and plates were supposed to tell the victorious proletariat about the accomplishments of the revolution. What and in what style to paint, the authorities have not yet specified, so the artists of the plant often decorated objects of propaganda porcelain with paintings in the style of cubo-futurism * or Suprematism. However, agitfarfor was never available to those to whom it was directly addressed. For a simple worker or peasant, it was too expensive and from the workshops of the plant was sent to European exhibitions and auctions, to private collections. Since 1921, all LFZ products were exported exclusively. The reorientation to the West quickly became visible to the naked eye – inscriptions appeared on dishes in English and German, and revolutionary plots were increasingly replaced by illustrations for Russian fairy tales. In the late 1960s, the LFZ launched a re-release of the most famous samples of agitational and Suprematist porcelain based on sketches by Chekhonin and Suetin.
What does porcelain call for?
The slogans with which the artists decorated dishes and teapots were personally approved by Comrade Lenin. Among those he approved were the statements of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Karl Marx, as well as quotes from the anarchist Bakunin, the philosopher Confucius, the poet Ovid, the orator Cicero, the utopian Thomas More, the art theorist John Ruskin … and, oddly enough, from the Gospel! In the 30s, more laconic and accessible words appeared on mass dishes: “Give Turksib!”, “Oil for the country!”, “Listen to the radio!” and even “Brush your teeth!” However, already at that time, many critics spoke out against decorating dishes with slogans. Cups should not call for something and demand something, let them please the eye with floral ornaments – insisted these politically illiterate personalities.
Porcelain, not that
Already in the early 1920s, the excitement among Western collectors led to the fact that in Germany they began to actively counterfeit Soviet porcelain. The “passport” of porcelain is the marks on the bottom of the item. The earliest and most valuable samples of agit-porcelain were made on the basis of pre-revolutionary “linen” – items that had not yet been painted. At their bottom, stamps of the tsarist times (letters “H-II”, “A-II”, “A-III” under the imperial crown) or the sign of the Provisional Government – a two-headed eagle in a circle with the date “1917” were preserved. In the production of agitporcelain, these symbols were painted over with a green rhombus or oval, and a new brand was placed next to it – a crossed sickle, hammer and part of a gear. Counterfeiters usually just draw green diamonds or ovals in this place.
The predecessor of the Soviet agit-porcelain was faience from the time of the Great French Revolution (1789-94). Royalists (defenders of the monarchy) produced plates with the image of a royal flower – a lily, and supporters of the revolution – with a Gallic rooster and a Phrygian cap, a symbol of a freed slave. In 1778, Catherine II ordered four dinner sets from the private porcelain factory of Gardner, depicting the main awards of the Empire – the Orders of St. George, St. Vladimir, Alexander Nevsky and Andrew the First-Called. Order sets were used once a year – at a dinner in the Winter Palace on the day of the corresponding saint.
In the 1920s, Italian futurists did their best to promote their style among the broad masses. The artist Giacomo Balla even managed to organize the production of “futuristic” tableware. True, she bought up badly: it was inconvenient to use square sugar bowls and octagonal cups. Since 1923, the LFZ began to produce “Suprematist” dishes, made according to the sketches of Kazimir Malevich and his students – Ilya Chashnik * and Nikolai Suetin.
In the 1990s, at the porcelain factory in Dulevo, a small edition of dishes was produced according to the sketches of modern avant-garde artists – Francisco Infante, Vladimir Nemukhin, Eduard Steinberg and others.
In 1966, a “cultural revolution” began in China, which set itself the task of eradicating “bourgeois” values and introducing “socialist realism” everywhere. The porcelain industry survived only because the craftsmen thought of decorating their works with portraits of Mao, his associates and their “orders”.
The earliest samples of propaganda porcelain are easy to recognize – they only have painted sides, and the central part (“mirror”) is pristine.
The fashion for porcelain figurines of oriental girls and children, which lasted the entire Soviet period, began in 1921 after the III Congress of the Comintern and the Congress of the Peoples of the East. On the occasion of the event, souvenirs were issued – dishes with the profile of the chairman of the congress Zinoviev and figurines of oriental beauties. In 1921, the leadership of the LFZ appealed to the Commission for Assisting the Hungry of the Volga Region with a proposal to release several dishes with special markings and drawings, which will not be reproduced later. These unique items were auctioned off and the proceeds went to help the hungry.
People
Sergei Chekhonin (1878-1936)
Artist, director of the LFZ in the 20s and ideologist of new art. In the 30s he turned from a “faithful companion of the revolution” into a “restorer of the old aristocratic romanticism.” He died in exile.
Alexey Morozov (1857-1934)
An industrialist and collector, in 1918 he acquired the first of the busts of Marx issued by the experimental workshop. Soon, Morozov’s collection was nationalized, and the Museum of Porcelain was opened in his house.
Elvira Sametskaya
The author of dozens of books and articles devoted to the history of porcelain once, under a green oval on the back of a “propaganda” plate, discovered the inscription Made in Japan.