The Color of Heaven is Blue... Cobalt on the Porcelain of the Imperial (Lomonosov) Porcelain Factory 18th - 19th Centuries. From the Christmas Gift series

On 25 December 2007, in Hall 152 (Eastern Gallery of the Winter Palace), as part of the traditional series Christmas Gifts a new exhibition was opened which details the history of glazed paintings in cobalt at the famous St. Petersburg enterprise. The exposition displays the masterpieces of imperial and Soviet porcelain and also with the work of contemporary artists at the factory.

Glazing paintings using cobalt is an extremely ancient and one of the most complicated forms of decorating ceramics, demanding a high level of mastery. This science took over a thousand years to develop in the East, it experienced a bloom with European porcelain.

The exhibition of the State Hermitage Museum includes approximately two hundred works which demonstrate cobalt techniques in decorative porcelain, and also the mastership of many creative artists.

Among the works created before 1917 is the Vase and Lid with an Allegorical Painting in Medallions (late 1780s – 1796), made in honour of Empress Catherine the Great. The vase Frost (1910) which is mentioned in the production lists of the Imperial Porcelain Factory to be brought to the Christmas celebrations of 1911 for Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.

The variety in the works displayed by the masters of the Soviet period bear the visiting card of the oldest porcelain factory in Russia, the dinner service Cobalt Net (1950); the Snow Maiden dinner service (1922), made to the storyline of the opera by Rimsky-Korsakov; the porcelain vase, specially made for the porcelain factory museum North Sea Route (1937), embodying the heroism of Cheluskin’s crew which had been trapped on Arctic ice and were heroically rescued.

Among the work of contemporary artists at the factory one can draw attention to the plates from the Polar Sky series (2007), dedicated to military aviators from the anti-aircraft defense regiments (PVO) of the Leningrad Military District, which were named after the months of winter: December, January and February. In the paintings of the composition Stanza (2007) a Russian translation of a poem by Kanagaki Robun, is used to decorate the porcelain which was painted for a memorial portrait of the artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi.

A coloured catalogue has been produced for the exhibition (State Hermitage Publishing House, 2007). The exhibition curator is N.L. Pavlukhina, a scientific researcher at the Department for the Museum of the Imperial Porcelain Factory attached to the State Hermitage Museum.

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Galina Tsvetkova, Chair of the Supervisory Board of the St. Petersburg Imperial Porcelain Factory, and Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage, at the exhibition

At the opening of the exhibition

At the exhibition

The exhibition catalogue