BY THE IMPERIAL PORCELAIN FACTORY, ST. PETERSBURG, PERIOD OF NICHOLAS II, FROM THE MODEL BY EVGENII LANCERAY AND NATALIA DANKO, 1915

Harvest, a table ornament comprising vases and figures of female dancers in folk costume, was produced by the Imperial Porcelain Factory in 1915. It was based on the designs of Evgenii Lanceray (1875-1946), son of the famous sculptor and a designer at the factory since 1901. He was Chief Designer from 1912 and was assisted by Natalia Danko (1892-1942). In 1914, Danko had begun working as an assistant to Vasilii Kuznetsov, the head of the factory's sculpture workshop, and executed his designs in addition to those of Lanceray. Harvest is indebted in its form and decoration to the Guriev Service, one of the factory's most acclaimed services, produced a century earlier and decorated with various Russian folk types. The figures in the present centre-piece share obvious stylistic similarities to those of a figural fruit vase and two dessert vases from the Guriev Service, preserved in the Peterhof State Museum-Reserve (T. Kudriavtseva, op cit, pp. 104-105, illustrated). Plans to expand Harvest into a larger Imperial service were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. The present centre-piece was originally conceived in four parts. The signature 'Dit' is that of Andrei Ditrich, a sculptor at the factory who was known for executing sculptural vases and figures, including those by Pavel Kamensky for his Peoples of Russia series.
Replicas of Harvest are preserved in the Porcelain Factory Museum Department of the Hermitage, the Decorative Art Museum in Moscow, and in a private collection