IPM | History of the manufactory

1744

Foundation of Manufactory under Empress Elizabeth of Russia

Established in 1744 in Saint Petersburg by order of Empress Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great, the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory became the first porcelain works in Russia and the third one in Europe.
A little more than three centuries ago the Europeans had no idea from what porcelain was made. Chinese masters carefully guarded the secrets of its production. Owing to its rarity and price porcelain was valued as gold and it was often called “white gold”. Articles made of porcelain were presented as gifts to crowned persons, they were used to embellish state halls and to lay tables on special majestic occasions, and noble court ladies used to wear small pieces of porcelain on golden chains as the most expensive and exquisite decorations. It was only at the beginning of the eighteenth century that the Saxonian alchemist Johann Friedrich Böttger, who spent many years looking for the “philosopher’s stone”, at last found, with the assistance of the physicist and mathematician Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus, a recipe for the production of European porcelain. In 1710, Europe’s earliest porcelain manufactory was founded at the inaccessible and closely guarded Albrechtsburg Castle of Meissen.
This event naturally could not pass unnoticed by Peter the Great, a passionate admirer of European scientific and technological experience. The autocrat regularly ordered porcelain and faience crockery abroad for everyday use and for the decoration of his interiors. During his visits to European countries, Peter the Great revealed an interest in the production of porcelain and even tried to create a similar enterprise with an assistance of foreigners in Russia. Peter’s idea to establish a court
porcelain manufactory in Russia was, however, realized only twenty years later, by his daughter Elizabeth Petrovna, Russian Imperatrice

On 1 February 1744 Baron Nikolay Korf concluded an agreement with Christoph Hunger, according to which the latter was obliged “to establish in St Petersburg a manufactory for the production of pure porcelain in the manner it was produced in Saxony.”
It turned out, however, that Hunger knew too little to organize a new production. Baron Cherkasov, who was charged with the organization and supervision of the manufactory by the empress,
faced a dilemma: to look abroad for a new man acquainted with porcelain production or to entrust the “porcelain business” in Russia to Dmitry Vinogradov, who in November 1744 was trained nextto Hunger as a pupil. D.I. Vinogradov (1720–1758), a talented Russian scientist, distilled the secret of so-called “white gold”. He was the first in the history of ceramics to draw up the scientific description of p orcelain manufacturing process close to the latest concepts of ceramic chemistry. Russian porcelain, created by Vinogradov exclusively from local raw materials, was not inferior to porcelain produced in Saxony. During the early period the dimensions of the furnaces allowed to produce, in addition to large quantities of snuff-boxes, only small pieces: they manufactured tea, coffee and chocolate cups with saucers, sweet bowls, saltcellars, tips for walking sticks, handles for knives and forks, spoons, buttons, smoking pipes, Easter eggs and many other items.Since 1756, when Dmitry Vinogradov managed to build a large kiln, they began to make plates,dishes, trays, candlesticks, wine bottle coolers and wineglass holders… It was in this period that the earliest table set, owned by Elizabeth Petrovna and called “Her Majesty’s Own Service”, was produced.

1762-1801

Rise of Russian Porcelain During the Reign of Catherine II and Paul I. Early Classicism.

The Golden Age of Catherine II, called the Great, became the period when the art of porcelain reached its fullest development in Russia. From the very beginning of her reign Catherine gave much attention to porcelain production. Before going for her coronation to Moscow, she entrusted the Cabinet of Her Imperial Majesty to select the best porcelain articles at the manufactory and send them to the former capital of Russia for display and sale. In a year the empress visited the enterprise and bought 29 snuff-boxes there.

In the reign of Catherine the Great the Neva Porcelain Manufactory was reorganized. In 1765 it gained a new name – the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory. Since then the Cabinet began to allot fifteen thousand roubles annually for the development of production in order “to provide entire Russia with porcelain”. By the middle of the 1790s the staff of the factory grew to 200 people. Its labour efficiency markedly increased: in a year, 38 thousand pieces as well as 657 forms and models were produced. From the start of Catherine’s reign the imperial factory was set a double task: to produce artistic porcelain representing a new kind of decorative art in Russia and simultaneously to function as a commercial enterprise yielding income. A great influence on the development of Russian porcelain in the Catherine age was exerted by Jean-Dominique Rachette, a talented French sculptor, who was invited to the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory as a model master in 1779 and supervised its sculptural department until 1804.

In the middle of the 1770s a three-volume edition of the treatise Description of All the Peoples Inhabiting the Russian State, by Academician Johann Gottlieb Georgi, accompanied by colourful drawings and engravings, was published in St Petersburg. With the empress’s approval and under Rachette’s guidance, the Peoples of Russia sculptural series was produced at the factory from these engravings. Later, also using models by the French sculptor, a series of types of St Petersburg craftsmen and street vendors was created. This collection initiated one of the most remarkable traditions in Russian porcelain. The best pieces of the “Catherine porcelain wares” convey the ideology of autocracy and “educated absolutism”. A great attention is given to the personality of the empress herself: we can see portraits and monograms of Catherine the Great on various objects, as well as her sculpted allegories such as “Russian Minerva”, a legislatress or a benefactress of the Russian State.

The biscuit bust of Catherine II, executed by Rachette from her marble portrait by Fedot Shubin, is notable for its artistic and technical excellence. The crowning achievements of the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory became the luxurious table sets for state dinners, commissioned by Catherine the Great. They rivalled the splendour of St Petersburg palaces built by famous architects and permeated with grandeur and perfection. Emperor Paul I (1796–1801) inherited from his mother an interest in porcelain. In his reign a tradition was established at the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory to present its best works as gifts to the imperial family for Christmas, Easter and other feasts. Simultaneously the factory continued to produce Easter eggs, mirror frames, clock cases, chandeliers, inkpots, etc. For the emperor’s personal use they made a large writing set with the monogram П I, which resembled by its design the sculptural allegories of the Arabesque Service.

1801-1825

Re-organisation under Alexander I. High Classicism

Alexander I (1801–25). Alexander I inherited an interest in the porcelain factory, too. But the turbulent historic events that befell to his reign did not allow the emperor, who defeated Napoleon and saved Europe, from giving due attention to the development of Russian porcelain. The only man, who was responsible for the state of affairs at the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory throughout the reign of Alexander I,became the manager of the Cabinet of His Imperial Majesty, Count Dmitry Guryev. In 1809 Dmitry Guryev, who was eager to make the art department impeccable, invited the sculptor Stepan Pimenov, an adjunct-professor of the Academy of Arts, to the factory. At Pimenov’s request, Alexey Voronikhin, a nephew of the celebrated architect Andrey Voronikhin, was also brought from the Academy to the sculptural chamber. From the Sèvres Manufactory, famous for its painters, they invited Henri Adam, and later to the factory came, also from Sèvres, two “porcelain artists” – the gilder-decorator Denis Morot and the painter Jacques François Joseph Swebach. Warmly welcomed at the factory, all of them contributed to the improvement of porcelain production; they educated and trained many Russian craftsmen. The Russian porcelain not only glorified the deeds of the Emperor but also conveyed national ideas and attitudes. For example, Guryevsky dinner set is an ode to the people who won the Patriotic War of 1812. This historical event also gave rise to a series of “war plates” depicting the soldiers and officers of all branches of Russian military service. Moreover, portrait painting was widely practiced. The Imperial Porcelain Manufactory used to make cups with the images of the crowned heads and dignitaries of the time. Vases played a special part in the manufactory output from the early years of Alexander I’s reign and till the 1860s. Gold became one of the favourite decorative materials, while painting was dominated by landscapes and battle scenes. Another important group of products included palace dinner sets.

1825 - 1894

Era of Nicholas I, Alexander II and Alexander III

The Imperial Porcelain Manufactory provided almost all St. Petersburg palaces with its dinner sets during the reign of Alexander I and Nicholas I (1825-1855). Porcelain ware enjoyed the extensive diversity of styles. Among others, so-called Russian trend took the root. Fedor Solntsev, a Russian archaeologist and virtuoso, designed dinner sets for the Great Kremlin Palace in Moscow and Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich of Russia.
In the time of Nicholas I, porcelain stood out for its artful painting. The vases displayed the old masters’ chef d’oeuvres (Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Correggio, Murillo, etc.) mostly from the Hermitage collection. The replicas are notable for their striking accuracy and refinement. The palette of pure and brilliant colours is in perfect accord with the originals. At the same time, portrait, icon and miniature painting on vases and panels also gained momentum. The awards of world fairs in London, Paris and Vienna proved the leadership of IPM in porcelain painting.
The Imperial Porcelain Manufactory celebrated its 100th anniversary by establishing its own museum in 1844. It included a fine display of exhibits from the Winter Palace collections (decision to make porcelain ware in two copies, one for the Palace and one for the museum, was not made until Alexander III).

1894-1917

Reign of Nicholas II and Russian Art Nouveau. Pre - revolution time.

During the reign of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II (1894–1917), thanks to the technical innovations of the previous period, the plant experiences state samples in technical and technological respects. In 1907 Emperor Nicholas II initiated a production of the Peoples of Russia collection, which became the largest sculptural series in the history of Russian artistic porcelain. The leadership of the project was entrusted to the eminent sculptor and theatrical decorator Pavel Kamensky. Originally the project comprised 400 figurines, but after a scrupulous work a decision was taken to depict 73 peoples, i.e. 146 separate male and female figurines in national costumes. Among the best sculptural pieces of this period are the small, elegantly coquettish figurines of Lady with a Mask, Lovers, On a Boulder, executed for the factory by Konstantin Somov, an artist of the World of Art society. This art union with its program of aristocratic aesthetics, cultivating a noble aroma of the bygone ages, played a prominent part in the cultural life of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. With the appointment of a new director, Nikolay Strukov, the influence of the World of Art Union on the porcelain factory increased. Strukov invited the artist and architect Yevgeny Lanceray, a member of this circle, to supervise creative activities at the enterprise and Lanceray, in turn, attracted to the factory the sculptor Vasily Kuznetsov and his assistant Natalia Danko. Among the works worthy of special attention, one should point out the portraits of the ballet dancers Anna Pavlova and Tamara Karsavina created by the sculptor Serafim Sudbinin. The statue of Karsavina, having a single point of support, the ballerina’s leg en pointe, was then the only example in the world. The war of 1914–17 sharply changed the production profile : the production of artistic porcelain wares was reduced to a minimum and the small amount produced was sold by the Cabinet at charity parties for the benefit of royal military hospitals. Theonly pieces manufactured in large quantities, were Easter eggs, intended for “Christening with soldiers at the front”. Nicholas II’s last visit to the factory in December 1916 outwardly looked decently. His Majesty was acquainted with traditional presentation pieces of the imperial family for Christmas; a regular commission for Easter eggs was taken.
Russia was on the threshold of the revolutionary year 1917...

1918 - 1930

October Revolution and Porcelain in the 1920s

In March 1918 the State Porcelain Factory was put under the guardianship of People’s Commissariat for Education. The enterprise personnel was set a task to convert the former court man ufactory as soon as possible into an “experimental ceramic laboratory of republican significance”, producing “propaganda porcelain in the high meaning of this work – revolutionary in content, perfect in form and impeccable in its technical execution.” The first post-revolutionary years were marked by a truly unseen boom of mass-scale propaganda art. In this festive polyphony of resounding and vivid colours, in the use of special imagery for the propaganda of the victorious revolution, porcelain products occupied a prominent place. Plates, saucers and cups were decorated with the same slogans, aphorisms and sayings, which could be seen on posters and panels on squares and streets of red Petrograd. By orders of Vladimir Lenin, head of the state, the production of artistic porcelain at the factory took an “exclusively export character”, and propaganda porcelain became hardly not the only export item of the republic’s contemporary art industry.

The creation of post-revolutionary porcelain was connected, above all, with the name of Sergey Chekhonin, who was put at the head of creative work at the factory by the Fine Arts Department of the Commissariat for People’s Education. Vasily Kuznetsov, Natalia Danko and Rudolph Wilde began to work Mikhail Adamovich, Zinaida Kobyletskaya and Maria Lebedeva. Prominent artists, such as Nathan Altman, Mstislav Dobujinsky, Vladimir Tatlin, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Pavel Kuznetsov, Boris Kustodiev and Alexander Matveyev, also contributed to the creation of porcelain articles. In 1918 Chekhonin invited to the factory Alexandra Shchekatikhina-Pototskaya, who studied first at the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of Arts and completed her education in the Académie Rançon in Paris. By this time Shchekatikhina, a pupil of Nicholas Roerich and Ivan Bilibin, had a success as a theatrical designer, but the outstanding gifts of this eminent master were most fully revealed in the field of porcelain. In search of new solutions in the field of form Kasimir Malevich, a founder of Suprematism, and his pupils were invited to work with porcelain. In sculpture and painted decoration of porcelain they used Suprematist compositions revealing the dynamism of proportions and lines. Suprematist. In 1925, to commemorate the 200th Anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the State Porcelain Factory was named after the outstanding scientist Mikhail Lomonosov. And in the next year the factory sent to the World Exhibition to Paris about 300 works created in the post-revolutionary period.

1930-1950

The period before and during the Second World War

Following industrialization and collectivization carried out in the country, as a result of which, according to the party documents, “a victory of Socialism was ensured in the USSR”, a wide-scale “cultural construction” started in the early thirties. Socialist Realism, practically denying all alternative trends in art and literature, was proclaimed as the only true method to be used by Soviet artists. The Lomonosov Porcelain Factory that had rich cultural traditions and professional personnel came to be regarded as the basis for the creation of a new style consonant with socialist everyday life. In 1931 the country’s first art laboratory was established there. A year later Nikolay Suetin, sent to the factory by the Leningrad Section of the Union of Artists, was put at the head of it. Together with him at the factory worked the young talented artists Ivan Riznich, Alexey Vorobyevsky and Mikhail Mokh, active at the factory since the middle of the 1920s. A group of graduates of the Leningrad College of Industrial Art – Tamara Bespalova, Liudmila Protopopova, Liubov Blak, Lydia Lebedinskaya, Anna Yefimova, Anna Yatskevich and Serafima Yakovleva – joined them to become later legendary masters of Soviet porcelain. These artists treated contemporary themes in porcelain with a subtle taste and a classical sense of harmony, be it an allegory of socialist construction in the painting of the service named “From the Taiga to Construction” or the theme of industrial development and glorification of heroic labour, originally dealt in the “Industrial” and “Metal” Services and the painted decoration of the Hay-Making vase. The individual manner of Alexey Vorobyevsky took shape and became recognizable almost immediately. This talented artist possessed a striking poetic vision of the world, in which the subtle elegance of the World of Art traditions was harmoniously interwoven with the light spirituality of Russian folk art. Vorobyevsky never made preliminary sketches. He created his fascinating theatrical world directly on a porcelain blank. A festive extravaganza with aerial castles, crystal bridges, gallant ladies and cavaliers was replaced in it by a merry-go-round with horses and cockerels borrowed from popular folk prints. In Vorobyevsky’s enchanting world numerous fairy-tale characters neighbour with refined and tender ballerinas and white Arctic ice hummocks appear next to the legendary Gardens of Semiramis.

Having once created this charming realm, the artist himself, shrugging his shoulders, used to say: “I don’t invent anything, these are my dreams.” To create new forms of Soviet porcelain, sculptors turned to simple geometrical shapes – sphere, cylinder and ovoid. The principle of simplicity and laconicism corresponded to the creative views of Nikolay Suetin, head of the group, who harmoniously implemented Suprematist ideas in porcelain. He laid the emphasis on the purity and clarity of form, logical integrity of the composition, dynamism and conciseness of painting. In 1933, under Suetin’s supervision, Eva Shtrikker developed the first service shape for a mass-scale Intourist production. A little later Suetin’s Standard and Crocus shapes were created. And the new form, designed in 1936 by the young sculptor Serafima Yakovleva for the Tulip Service, became a classical shape of Soviet porcelain that was invariably present in the factory’s repertory for many years. Pieces of sculpture also reflected themes of contemporary life.
Theatrical theme also received its original development in porcelain sculpture, such as friendly caricatures by the Kukryniksy (popular trio of cartoonists – the artists Mikhail Kupriyanov, Porfiry Krylov and Nikolay Sokolov) depicting such prominent theatrical figures as Stanislavsky, Kachalov,Moskvin, Prokofyev and Meyerhold. In 1936, on the occasion of the adoption of the Stalin Constitution, a small exhibition of works created by the factory’s artists was held in the Kremlin, which enjoyed a general acclaim of the country’s leaders. As a result of this success a decision was taken to increase the production of artistic porcelain nearly fivefold. The head artist Nikolay Suetin learned about this decision in Paris, where the Soviet pavilion was built according to his design at the World Exhibition of 1937, for which he was awarded the Grandprix. The porcelain articles of the factory, represented at this exhibition by works of the last years, received the Gold Medal again.
During the years of World War II the factory did not work. Some of its departments and the priceless collection of museum porcelain wares were evacuated to the Urals. The territory of the enterprise was used for quartering a military unit. Many employees of the Lomonosov Factory went to the front and to the volunteer corps, the remaining personnel became soldiers of a local anti-aircraft defence detachment.
Leningrad porcelain artists dealt with the theme of war in their works. Shaded windows, half-destroyed buildings, piercing rays of searchlights dissecting the night sky — this is how Leningrad was depicted in 1943 in a service painting by the artist Lydia Libedinskaya. And several years later Alexandra Shchekatkhina-Pototskaya painted on vases the incomparably profound patriotic images of Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky, Dmitry Donskoy and Alexander Nevsky. The trials and tribulations of the war years evoked a natural demand of people for true art, forthe beauty of nature, a return to the ideals of human relations.

1950 - 1990

Soveit period: creation of the best

In post-war art, after the asceticism of the blockade years, the overwhelming need for beauty and joy is expressed. In porcelain painting, fertility and wealth in the works of Anna Efimova, folk popular motifs and fairy-tale fantasies by Alexei Vorobyevsky, decorative ornament of Anna Yatskevich became an example of this. In sculpture - the theme of childhood and motherhood in the works of Sofia Velikhova and Galina Stolbova. The animal world and literary characters are represented in the plastic of Boris Vorobyov. A talented illustrator and writer Yevgeny Charushin, outstanding sculptors Vera Mukhina and Elena Yanson-Manizer, who embodied portraits of ballet dancers in china, are involved in cooperation with the plant. The revival of the technique of underglaze painting begins. At the Lomonosov Porcelain Factory intense work on new shapes of services, vases, carafes, decorative objects and souvenir articles was under way in this period. An indubitable masterpiece was the Crystal vase by the sculptor Vladimir Semionov, which won him the Grand-prix at the International Exhibition in Brussels in 1958. At the same exhibition gold medals were awarded to Serafima Yakovleva for her Tulip, Spring and Eastern service shapes, Alexey Vorobyevsky for the painted decorations of the Folk Patterns and Russian Folk Print Sets and Anna Yatskevich for her decoration of the Cobalt Net Service. The painted Cobalt Net pattern, inspired by an Elizabethan service, harmoniously emphasized the soft, lobed form of the Tulip, creating as a result a strikingly noble and classically elegant piece. This service became the factory’s brand mark and has remained its “visiting card” to this day. The traditions of Russian artistic porcelain could be sensed in works produced by a large group of artists who joined the creative team in the early 1950s, on graduation from the Mukhina Higher School of Art and Design. Attachment to these lofty artistic traditions was demonstrated by Anna Leporskaya and Vladimir Gorodetsky, eminent masters of Soviet decorative and applied art. Leporskaya had an excellent schooling in due time under Malevich and Petrov-Vodkin, and later Suetin. Her porcelain pieces are emphatically concise and clear; their proportions are impeccable and the line pattern is so expressive that it allows to regard the white, unpainted articles as fully finished works of art. In this category may be included, for instance, the emotional and plastically expressive Drop form for a service or the strictly elegant Leningrad shape with a thought-out utilitarian character of items. The latter coffee and dessert service won the Grand-prix at the Prague. Exhibition of the International Academy of Ceramics in the early 1960s.

In the late 1960s the Lomonosov Factory began to produce unusual cups made of bone china. They differed from common, hard porcelain not only by their elegance, lightness and translucency, but also by a warm, soft colour of the body, by a very thin layer of glaze and that feeling of airiness, which was characteristic of the celebrated Chinese “egg-shell” kind of porcelain, also called “bodiless ware”. In addition these bone china articles, when thumped slightly, resounded with a pleasant bell-like tone. The development of bone china demanded to change literally the entire technological process, starting from the preparation of slip (liquid paste for moulding) and ending with firing. Together with clay, kaolin, feldspar and quartz, the composition of the paste also included preliminarily fired bone powder, which resulted in the production of a snow-white “stem”. This piece of porcelain was glazed by means of a sprayer laying a very thin coat of glazing. The properties of the new material were fully appreciated by the leading sculptors Eduard Krimmer, Anna Leporskaya and Vladimir Semionov. The new shapes of cups and services created by them invariably emphasized such qualities of porcelain as delicacy, translucency and whiteness, while preserving the overall classical commensurability of proportions and a clear-cut, pure linear design of articles. All these specific features were revealed in Nina Slavina’s majestic White Flower set resembling by its forms blossoming bluebells with emphatically bent wavy edges of the pieces. This work, together with Slavina’s other articles, was awarded a silver medal of the USSR Academy of Arts and is now in the collection of the Museum of Decorative and Applied Arts of Russia and in the State Hermitage.

Our Time

Traditions and Modern Trends

The year 2002 witnessed an event that marked the start of a new period in the history of the enterprise: the controlling shareholding was bought out from the foreign owners by the family of well-known Russian entrepreneurs and donators – Nikolay Tsvetkov and Galina Tsvetkova. Galina Tsvetkova, an art collector, connoisseur and expert in Russian artistic porcelain, was appointed Chairman of the Overseeing Committee of Lomonosov Porcelain Factory Company. One of the major trends in the art strategy of the enterprise became the encouragement of contemporary porcelain artists’ individual creativity. At the end of 2003 a new department of the Hermitage Museum - “The Museum of the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory” based on the rich collection of the factory has been opened. This event has laid the beginning of a new creative union of the earliest porcelain enterprise and the main art museum of the state.

The Imperial Porcelain Manufactory is one of few enterprises of the art industry that has steadily preserved its creative team. Nowadays, about two dozens of highly qualified artists and sculptors are working in the creative laboratory of the enterprise. Artists create new works, different from one another and winning recognition both among lovers of porcelain and among the experts. Six artists of the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory have an honourary rank of “Merited Artist of the Russian Federation”, four leading artists are members of the Russian Academy of Arts and a number of them are awarded medals and diplomas of the Academy. An important factor stimulating the artists’ creative efforts are exhibition projects, which offer a wide field for innovative experiments. Works created at the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory are regularly put on display in the State Hermitage, State Russian Museum, State Moscow Kremlin Museum-Preserve, Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Preserve, Peterhof State Museum-Preserve and other major museum complexes of Russia. In 2006 shareholders initiated the creation at the factory of the Heritage Foundation, in which the best works by contemporary masters of the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory are preserved. Today the foundation boasts a unique collection of present-day artists’ individual porcelain works.

In search of new artistic solutions the factory regularly invites well-known contemporary artists for cooperation.
Alongside creative experiments, an important feature of the period from the 1990s to 2010s becomes a turn to the art history of the enterprise. This interest is witnessed by the creation of replicas of unique works from the imperial period as well as masterpieces of propaganda porcelain. In 2007 the famous vase dating from the first decades of the nineteenth century, Gossipers, one of the most perfect works from this age, was recreated. It took four long years for sculptors and artists to produce exact copies of crater-shaped vases from a sample dating from 1830. In 2007 the factory’s masters began to recreate the sculptural series The Peoples of Russia. By 2019 all the 74 sculptures from models by Pavel Kamensky have been recreated. The copies of masterpieces of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries are executed by the best master craftsmen with the use of the originals kept in the collection of the State Hermitage and other Russian museums. During the recent years many lost technologies have been regained, including hand-modelled bouquets of porcelain paste, pâte-sur-pâte technique and crystal glazes.

Among the most important trends in the activities of the enterprise are special commissions of various kinds – from private clients to major companies and government organizations. In 2003, dinner service complexes with the hallmark of the Lomonosov Porcelain Factory (LFZ) were used to lay the tables at all official receptions devoted to the Tercentenary of St Petersburg. In the middle of the 2000s the factory’s experts successfully fulfilled government commissions for the EurAsEC and Russia-EU international summits.

Since 2008 the factory is supervised by Tatyana Tylevich. Nowadays more than two million articles are annually produced at the factory, the repertory is regularly innovated, a retail network is being enlarged and a volume of foreign trade grows.
Today, articles with the mark of “imperial porcelain” offer a wide range of high-quality household wares and unique works of art, superb porcelain replicas of eighteenth to twentieth-century masterpieces and contemporary individual artistic works, which represent new achievements in the development of artistic porcelain. The articles produced at the factory in different periods of its history are the pride of major museums and private art collections.

About three centuries have passed since the foundation of the Neva Porcelain Manufactory. Rulers and epochs, art styles and trends were changing. Periods of crisis and depression of production rate were replaced with periods of recovery, development and flowering of the art of Russian porcelain. Even in the severe times of wars and revolutions, the history of the first porcelain enterprise of Russia was not interrupted thanks to the experience and traditions passed down from one generation to the next, thanks to the professionals, who having a good command of their work and truly loving it. Relying on the inseparable link of age-old traditions and new creative quests, the St Petersburg school of porcelain, which became one of important symbols of the Northern Capital and an important feature of the national culture of Russia, continues its successful development.

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