156. Fragile things
“- Oh, sir, what great dishes in your house that emphasize your refined aristocratic taste! I'm delighted!
- Yes, sir, this is a unique Chinese porcelain of the 17th century. And this one shallow elegant cup that I recently bought at auction, I especially like it!
- And why, sir?
- It's very convenient to lick sour cream out of it!”
Overheard somewhere in the aristocratic society.
“On the Great Silk Road, the border guards stop the caravan.
- What are you carrying?
- Porcelain and silk.
- Oh, these cheap Chinese consumer goods again?”
A medieval joke
Porcelain
Production of porcelain in Russia
officially started in 1744 [1] , which put it behind Saxony (1710) and France (1740) but ahead of Prussia (1751). The interest can be tracked all the way back to Peter I who in 1712 visited residence of the King of Prussia and was quite impressed by the “Chinese rooms”. Upon return he ordered purchases for his Monplesir summer residence and from here the fashion spread to his entourage and stopped there: the damned things were extremely expensive even if most of them had been coming from Meissen [2].
The popularity of porcelain and the high need for it, combined with the high cost of imported products, naturally led to the idea of organizing Russian own production of porcelain products based on local materials. Since 1717, foreign pottery masters have been invited to train Russian masters and organize local production. In 1723, by decree of Peter I, benefits were granted to entrepreneurs who will be able to "introduce and distribute "curious art", especially using local raw materials”. As with many other things, “invention by the decree” did not produce immediate results even if in 1724, Afanasy Kirillovich Grebenshchikov opened a factory in Moscow to produce majolica with enamel painting. It was producing mostly smoking pipes and the tiles but starting from the late 1730s it began producing the dishes as well.
In 1744 by the imperial decree a “porcelain manufacture” had been open near St-Petersburg on an assumption that the local clay is similar to those used in Meissen. Unfortunately, invited German specialist, Christophe Conrad Hunger, failed to produce porcelain, was fired and died in 1748 in poverty. However, his assistant, Dmitry Vinogradov, was engaged in his own experiments, and after a long search, in 1746 he managed to obtain acceptable quality porcelain based on several varieties of Gzhel white clay, Olonets quartz and alabaster. The first products were of the inferior quality but after few years of improvements, it was possible to obtain porcelain, which was not inferior in quality to Saxon, but in composition close to Chinese, although produced exclusively from local raw materials.
Vinogradov’s fate was rather tragic: as soon as he got a success, he was pretty much held prisoner in the manufacture both to oversee the process and not to disclose its secrets. In 1758, at the age of 38, he fell seriously ill and soon died. To date, nine items with the personal brand of Vinogradov himself have been preserved. The first products of the manufactory were dishes and small decorative things such as snuffboxes and small figures of people and animals. All products were delivered exclusively to the imperial court.
Soon enough the nomenclature of the Imperial Porcelain Manufacture expanded and so did the the volume but the court was a huge consumer and imperial manufacture could not satisfy all its requirements. One of the first sets produced for the
personal usage of the imperial family, “Personal Service”, was made in 1756.
There were also huge sets like Arabesque service (973 items, including table decorations) or Cabinet set (800 items). For a while, the production capacities of the Imperial Manufacture had been more or less adequate (not always, see below) for covering only the court’s needs so it could concentrate exclusively on high-end products without bothering too much about its cost. The gold had been obtained from melting the coins provided by the Treasury, hand painting had been done by the high class artists using expensive paints and precious metals. The products had to maintain prestige of the imperial court so nobody was going to do penny pinching.
But by the end of the XVIII century, the plant had the first crisis: production grew so much that the court office - the only regular buyer - could no longer buy up all the goods produced, and the plant had no other markets outside the capital, as its extremely expensive products could not withstand competition with the products of private porcelain factories. There was a major reorganization, the debts had been written off, new technologies introduced, the plant was subordinated directly to the Imperial Cabinet [3] with a resulting re-orientation (again) mostly toward the court’s orders even if the shops were opened in the major cities to attend to the top segment of a consumer market.
Fortunately, enterprising merchants understood that tableware would be in high demand among all classes and the number of private manufactures grew fast. The most prestigious ones had been getting orders from the court. For example, the table services dedicated to the 4 Russian orders and used for the official annual receptions of the cavaliers of these orders had been provided by Gardner Manufacture after August III of Saxony presented “service of St. Andrew”. [4]
Intermission. These ensembles were intended for solemn receptions of those awarded with the order in the Imperial Palace. Celebrations were held according to a single ceremonial once a year: on the days of veneration of the saint or on the dates of adoption of the Statute (charter) of the Order. Invited to the Court were in order vestments. The Ceremonial dinner began after the solemn liturgy in the palace chapel and drinking for the imperial health were accompanied by the guns salute.
The decision on making the special table sets was made by His Imperial Majesty's Cabinet. Cabinet-Minister Count A. C. Olsufiev rightly reasoned that it was unwise to load the Imperial Porcelain Factory with work on multidisciplinary, but, in fact, similar complexes. As a result, preference was given to the plant of the Russified English merchant F. I. Gardner, the first private porcelain production in Russia, founded in the Moscow province in 1766. Thanks to contacts at the English Club, Gardner established himself as a man of business, and his porcelain presentations to the Russian Court demonstrated the ability of the enterprise near Moscow to create things "against European ones", especially since in comparison with the state manufactory, Gardner's products were much cheaper. For the manufacturer himself, the proposal to implement the ceremonial services for the Imperial Court turned out to be very flattering and promising.
St. George for 80 people
Order of St. Vladimir
Order of St. Alexander for 60 people.
Order of St. Andrew (to replace the old one from Meissen)
Franz Yakovlevich Gardner opened his enterprise in 1766 on the basis of the existing enterprise of Nikolai Urusov, on whose lands the factory stood. Gardner's task was to replace import of the foreign porcelain, primarily Meissen porcelain. And he quite succeeded.
Gardner invited Professor Franz Gattenberg of the University of Geneva from Switzerland as a technologist and craftsmen from Meissen, and by 1783 he had already received the right to put on his products the image of the Moscow coat of arms for the manufacturing three “order” sets.
Production in the Russian Empire developed rapidly: by 1762 there were already 12 manufactories - 7 porcelain and 5 faience, by the end of the century their number had increased to 20.
There were also manufactures addressing the lower end of the market producing faience and majolica:
- Afonasy Grebenshchikov's plant in Moscow (1724-1773)
- Majolica Gzhel (village of Bronnitsky and Bogorodsky Uyezd)
- State faience plant in St. Petersburg (1752-1802)
Besides major low-end plants (8 more had been open in the XIX century) there were numerous small-scale producers, especially in Gzhel area. Stopping to produce majolica at the end of the XVIII century, Gzhel masters quickly reoriented their production to making semi-faience, faience and porcelain. The development of these new industries was proceeding in parallel and often all three types of ceramics were produced at one plant. They were
much cheaper, the painting was simpler and done with the less expensive materials but as a result they were much more affordable even to the “lower middle class”.
As you can see from the painting below, even the not too fancy tea places had plenty of the faience tableware.
Glass
In 1634-39, in the village of Dukhanine near Moscow, Swedish master Julius Coyette built the first glass factory, which produced window glass and pharmacy dishes.
In 1669, by decree of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, a glass factory was built in Izmailov. Luxurious products for the royal court were produced here.
In the early XVIII few more glass factories had been founded in and near Moscow and in St-Petersburg. These factories produced mainly tall solemn cups made of colorless glass, decorated with matte engraving with images of portraits of reigning persons, with coats of arms and monograms, with all kinds of emblems, with floral ornaments. The decorativeness of the products was enhanced by gilding.
The recipe of the colored glass was developed by M.V. Lomonosov at the Ust-Ruditskaya factory, and then this technology spread to all plants in Russia. By the end of the XVIII century, ruby, blue, purple, green, turquoise, marble and milk glass were in fashion. Oxides of various metals were mainly used for painting. Ruby glass, which had shades from delicate pink to scarlet, was especially appreciated. Gold was introduced into its composition for painting. Products made of colored glasses were painted with gold and silver. Varieties of colored glasses in the XVIII century included milk glass, which looks like porcelain and, in fact, imitates it. Sometimes milk glass was dense, "thick", but more often translucent glass with a soft, luminous surface was produced. Of course, these were top end items produced mostly by the plants in St-Petersburg region oriented mostly toward the court consumption. The factories oriented toward a broader customer base produced jugs, wine glasses, flasks, cups, colorless glass icon-lamps. Altogether during the XVIII century more than 80 glass plants had been created, including 6 big ones near Moscow.
The most prominent of them was Pokrovsky plant in Mojaisk Uezd. Founded in 1724 it eventually grew up into the “glass empire” of the
Maltsev family which was going to dominate Russian glass production for the following two centuries. By the early XIX century the family owned 15 glass plants 4 of which were bigger than the Imperial plant producing both high end engraved glass and simpler items for a mass consumption.
In the second half of the XVIII century, Russia experienced intensive development of the glass industry and its main centers are formed. The main focus of private glass factories is Vladimir, Kaluga and Orel provinces. For example, 16 plants were built in Vladimirskaya by the end of the century, 6 in Kaluzhskaya and the same number in Orlovskaya. Plants in other provinces were being built on a smaller scale.
The main organizers of the Russian glass industry, of course, were enterprising merchants, who had to overcome a lot of difficulties in acquiring land plots and labor. However, among the owners of glass factories, there were also representatives of the Russian nobility and even top aristocracy: Golitsyns, Sheremeteves, Yusupovs had their own factories
Production of the mirrors started in 1706. Mirror glass was poured on a copper board and rolled with a copper roller (waft). The length of the copper board was 9 feet (2.75 m), width - five and a half feet (1.68 m), thickness - "half three fingers" (two and a half fingers). Among the raw cast glasses were some almost equal to the length of the board. For example, the length of glass is 3 3/4 arshin, i.e. 2.66 m. Even during the reign of Peter I Russian mirror factories could produce mirror glasses measuring 9X5 1/2 feet (2.75X1.68 m), significantly larger than the French ones.
So, basically, by the late XVIII Russian Empire was pretty much self-sufficient in the general ceramics and glass areas and the only imported items belonged to the narrow high-end niche of the “curiosities” types or to the fashions to adopt, as was the case with “Wedgwood blue”, the Meissen figurines, Sevres “classic” style, etc. Well, and of course, a little bit of “exotics” from China and Japan.
__________
[1] As often, there was a few years gap between the official date (opening of the manufacture) and the real first production. So probably 1744 is the year when Russia
started trying to produce porcelain rather than
produced it (AFAIK, the birth date is not when one was conceived). 😉
[2] Including stuff for Peter’s “
Chinese room” in Monplesir. I wonder if he was getting some discount from the Favorite Pet.
[3] A department responsible for emperor’s personal property. In other words, existence had been financially guaranteed.
[4] This one was for free.
