A PORCELAIN COFFEE POT FROM THE RUSLAN AND LYUDMILA SERVICE

BY THE STATE PORCELAIN FACTORY, PETROGRAD, CIRCA 1926

Details

A PORCELAIN COFFEE POT FROM THE RUSLAN AND LYUDMILA SERVICE
BY THE STATE PORCELAIN FACTORY, PETROGRAD, CIRCA 1926
Of tapering oblong form, on a white ground, one side painted with a portrait of Ruslan wearing a traditional helmet, chain mail and carrying a shield, the other side painted with a portrait of Lyudmila, wearing a traditional kokoshnik with partially gilt veil, with gilt borders, the handle shaped as a sheaf of wheat, with a detachable cover decorated with a gilt finial shaped as a pine cone, after a design by Sergei Chekhonin, marked under base with green underglaze hammer, sickle and cog indistinctly dated, also inscribed in Russian 'After the draw.[ing by] S.V. Chekhonin. MK.’ for Maria Kirillova
8 in. (20.3 cm.) high

Provenance

Acquired by the great-grandparents of the present owner in the late 1920s.

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Iona Ballantyne

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Lot Essay

The coffee service was created by Chekhonin in 1926 on commission from the Soviet embassy in Berlin. It was painted with his earlier 1921 illustrations of Alexander Pushkin’s poem ‘Ruslan and Lyudmila’.

For a comparative coffee pot, see A. Lunacharskii et al., Sovetskii farfor [Soviet Porcelain], Moscow, 1927, p. 36, also see A. Ivanova, I. N. Lipovich, Exhibition catalogue, Sergei Chekhonin, The State Russian Museum, Moscow, 1994, pp. 119-120, illustrated nos. 478-482. A similar coffee pot and the service are held in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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