 During
the years of the Great Patriotic War, production at the Leningrad
porcelain factory was suspended. Certain areas of production
and the priceless collections in the museum were evacuated
deep into the hinterlands, to the Urals. Troops were stationed
in the factory. Many of the factory's workers joined the army
or the militia; those who remained were conscripted into local
air defense.
On their journey from beleaguered Leningrad to Irbit those
two talented sisters, Natalia and Yelena Danko, were killed.
The elder, who had worked for over a quarter of a century
in the factory, left some 300 works of art and is rightly
regarded as the founder of Soviet porcelain modelling; the
other was a skilled decorator of her sister's works, wrote
the fascinating book "The Chinese Secret" and maintained
the chronicle of the porcelain factory. During the blockade,
the sculptors Taissiya Kuchkina and Nikolai Koltsov lost their
lives.
In the blockaded city, Suyetin organized the exhibition "The
Heroic Defense of Leningrad", in the creation of which
well-known architects, painters, museum staff, art historians,
people from Leningrad and frontline soldiers took part.
Blacked-out windows, half destroyed buildings, bright searchlights
cutting through the night sky - this was how the painter Lydia
Lebedinskaya portrayed Leningrad in 1942 on one service. A
few years later, Alexandra Shchekotikhina-Pototskaya decorated
a series of vases with the powerful patriotic figures of those
great Russians Minin and Posharski, Dmitri Donskoi and Alexander
Nevski, who in critical moments of Russian history had called
the people to the defense of their fatherland.
War was still raging, but the Soviet Government decided to
celebrate the 200th anniversary of the foundation of the first
Russian porcelain manufacture, and in 1944 the Lomonosov factory
was therefore decorated with the order of the Red Work Banner
for its contribution to the Russian defense industry and the
development of Soviet art.
On the first anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic
War, the factory made the largest vase ever, "Victory",
which was presented to Stalin and then passed on to the Tretyakov
Gallery. In the centre of the vase was a portrait of the supreme
commander painted by Alexei Skvortsov. On the vase's reverse
side was a representation of the celebratory victory fireworks
by Lydia Lebedinskaya. Ludmila Protopopova and Anna Yatskevich
took part in the execution of the medallion and the decoration
in general, while Nikolai Suyetin was responsible for the
overall project. Both the height of the vase and the rich
gilding and filigree decoration on a gold background enhanced
its monumental and festive effect, which was characteristic
of ceremonial vases of the Russian empire style.
The vase was transported with great difficulty to Moscow
to the minister responsible for building industry materials,
Lazar Kaganovich, under whose direction the porcelain factory
had been placed. Kaganovich evidently liked the vase and signed
a directive to give a medal and a financial award of one hundred
thousand rubles to the nearly 30 staff members involved in
its production as well as the works' director, Y. Leibmann.
At the time all products of the porcelain workers were submitted
to scrutiny for their political correctness. Had the portrait
of the supreme ruler been considered deficient, the recipients
of the medal would have instead have become inmates of one
of the gulags.
The austerity of the war years, the difficulties and deprivations
and the inevitable cultural vacuum awakened in people the
desire for true art, for beauty in their surroundings and
for spiritual enrichment of their lives. Thus the variety
of subjects, the rich colors and the "joie de vivre",
the manifold procedures to translate ideas and thoughts into
porcelain, were no accident. "To enhance, through beauty,
the material world which surrounds us" - this was the
concept of ceramic art during the post-war years.
The fruitfulness and richness of the earth were subjects
of the porcelain designed by Anna Yefimova with so much temperament,
wealth of color and vivacity. Her stormy style was complemented
by the more delicate graphic decorations of Tamara Bespalova-Mikhalyova
and the lyricism of Mikhail Mokh. There were, in addition,
the folkloric motifs of Alexei Vorobyevski and the decorative
ornamentation of Anna Yatskevich - all adding up to a general
atmosphere of gaiety.
The factory's range had never shown so much sculptural variety
as at that time. The works of the artists Sofia Velikhova
and Galina Stolbova, animals, represented the themes of childhood
and motherhood and literary heroes were the specialty of Boris
Vorobyev, and contemporary figures that of Vasili Stamov.
Among those who took part in the creation of porcelain sculptures
were the monumental sculptor Ivan Yefimov, the author of children's
books and illustrator Yevgeniy Charushin, and Vera Mukhina,
whose sculpture "Worker and Collective peasant woman"
had become a symbol of socialism. Light-footed and impetuous,
gentle and fragile, arrested in a moment of emotional turmoil,
the incomparable Galina Ulanova appears in the role of Odette
in the ballet "Swan Lake" in the figure by Yelena
Yanson-Maniser. This figure, several times enlarged and cast
in bronze, was exhibited in 1984 in front of the world's only
Museum of Dance in Stockholm in special homage to the achievements
of this magnificent ballerina.
The modeller Seraphima Yakovleva and the painter Lydia Lebedinskaya
dedicated their ceremonial service to the 250th jubilee of
Leningrad. In praise of the city, which had risen from the
ashes of destruction, they employed elements of form typical
of the 1940s and 1950s: architectural monumentality and a
representational decorative style, combined with pictures
of classicist buildings of the former capital on the Neva.
 At
the same time, new shapes for services, vases, carafes, decorative
items and souvenirs were created. The vase "Crystal"
by Semyonov symbolized reawakening life and embodied what
was new in decorative art. These aspects were stressed for
the World Exhibition of 1958 in Brussels, where this piece
and the Marine Vase (also by Semyonov) received the Grand
Prix. Seraphima Yakovlevna earned a gold medal for the modelling
of her services "Tulip", "Spring" and
"Orient", as did Alexei Vorobyevski for his painting
of the service "Folk Motifs" and "Russian Wood
Carving" and Anna Yazkevich for "Cobalt Net".
The decoration of "Cobalt Net", inspired by the
service from Elizabeth's period, fitted harmoniously into
the delicate tulip shape and produced a wonderfully noble,
classically beautiful whole. This service was to become the
Lomonosov factory's most recognized pattern, its visiting
card.
It is worth noting that these and other works, which were
awarded prizes at the World Exhibition, were not especially
designed for international display, but belonged to the factory's
standard range and was produced in large quantities.
The high level of artistry of Leningrad porcelain was displayed
during the exhibition "Art for Everyday" held in
1961 in the hall of the Moscow Riding School. At that time,
too, a special porcelain section was opened in the Russian
Museum in Leningrad.
During the 1960s Soviet art adhered to the so-called "new
style". On the one hand the aim was to abandon the excessive
pursuit of effect and the false pomp of the Stalin era. On
the other, the influence of western functional art was beginning
to be felt, and this coincided with the Khrushchev "thaw".
Thus, as so often in history, the "new" in negating
the "old", frequently went beyond the bounds of
what was reasonable. The stated principles of the new style
- simplicity, laconism, suitability to purpose - were turned
into the maxim "the more technical and suited to purpose,
the more aesthetic". Leningrad porcelain remained impervious
to these excesses and developed within the broad stream of
modern decorative art, while maintaining its traditional bias.
"This consistency", remarked the art historian
Alia Lansere who was director of the factory museum at the
time, "is the result of thorough expertise and a clear
perception of the fact that Russian Soviet porcelain has not
by any means yet exhausted all contemporary possibilities
of revealing beauty in the refined, varied forms that are
suited to the material."
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