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The exhibition "Beauty of General Use. Foreign household porcelain of the XX century" is opened in the Art Museum

On June 25, 2021, an exhibition of foreign household porcelain of the 20th century was opened at the Museum of Arts of the Kirovohrad Regional Council.

The exhibition "Beauty of General Consumption" presents foreign household porcelain of the twentieth century. The exhibits were handed over by our compatriot, who is currently a Canadian citizen - Olena Berikul-Kryvoruchko. Ms. Olena's passion for collecting has helped her collect a large number of unique porcelain exhibits that have been made in the UK, Japan, Italy, China, Germany, Canada and Mexico. After thirty years of collecting unique exhibits, the collector decided to donate a private collection to the museum of four regions of Ukraine where her ancestors come from. One of such regions is Kirovohrad region, where the Buz Cossacks of Krasnolissya - Kryvoruchky lived in the 18th-19th centuries, and Ms. Olena's grandfather Viktor Berikul worked on the railway in Oleksandrivka.

According to Olena Berikul-Kryvoruchko, her entire collection consists of more than three hundred products, various in terms of production technology, decoration, country of manufacture, seventy-six of which were transferred to the museum's stock collection.

This gift will allow you to immerse yourself in the world of beauty, discover all the secrets of making porcelain and ceramics. Porcelain is an incredible material - elegant and charming. It is believed that porcelain was first made by Chinese craftsmen during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), as it was in this country that the technology of porcelain production was invented. It was kept in secret its disclosure could have been punished by death sentence.

The collection includes utensils, figurines, vases. Most products are made of porcelain and earthenware, some of ceramics and glass. Among the products there is a Japanese vase with flowers, made of porcelain - "sponge cake" (a type of ceramics, unglazed porcelain, a product made of white porcelain, not covered with a shiny layer of lead glaze). Another vase is Chinese and made in Jingdezhen, the center of china production in China.

The peculiarity of this product is its lightness, because the material from which it is made is egg porcelain. A large number of works are made in the technique of moriage (thin strips of colored clay are applied to the porcelain surface to create the effect of three-dimensionality (3D)): sugar bowl "Dragon", tea set "Island", saucer "Dragon" and others. Some dishes were made in the style of shinaazri - a style in which Western European artists superficially reproduced the unfamiliar images of people and nature of China. The style has remained popular for over 200 years. The fashion for tea-making which has arisen in this day - the set for tea "Roses in a green frame", a set for coffee "Chrysanthemums" has also made the contribution to popularity of a shinoazri.

If we talk about the existence of porcelain in Europe, the real porcelain was invented in Britain quite late, and were common products from different types of stone mass. Like our faience, it is porous, opaque, coarse ceramics. In the collection, several plates are decorated with gilding and painted by hand: a plate of "Greek gods", a green plate with gilding and roses.

For example, the plate "Dating" is made of so-called "iron stone". Patented in the capital of English ceramics Staffordshire in the 19th century. It became world-famous as "poor man's porcelain", ie glazed pottery.

A unique and interesting exhibit is a blue plate from the Wedgwood factory. Typical examples of Wedgwood porcelain were products with a blue background, which was carefully applied embossed white decor. It is not completely porcelain, because it is not translucent and has a different firing temperature.

The collection includes products made of bone porcelain, invented by Josiah Spoud. This type of material is considered to be the strongest of all types due to the addition of calcined and powdered cattle bones to the porcelain material. An additional distinctive feature of bone china is that it is so thin that when you look at it in the light, you can see your hand and the decor on the walls of the product. It is the bone ash that makes the walls transparent, strong and dazzlingly white - white-green tea set, Lily of the valley tea set.

Some dishes contain a prestigious seal, which confirms that the porcelain company "Peregon" is a supplier of porcelain of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain, ie produces porcelain of exceptional quality and artistic decoration - a saucer with a rose and gilding.

Among the exhibits you can see statuettes with lace made in Germany. One of them "Dating" is decorated with natural fabric lace. In another, the fabric lace became a frame, which was filled with porcelain mass.

Another statuette "Yellow Flower" - a decoration for a wedding table. Previously, such flowers were made of ceramics or porcelain and decorated the holiday table. Many dishes are hand-painted, and some even have an author's painting: a plate of "Hummingbird" and a tea set "Hummingbird" by Lina Leah, a plate of "Jays" by artist Kevin Daniel.

For our museum, the porcelain collection is a great value and we are grateful to Ms. Olena for a generous gift. Feelings of honor and respect lurked in the hearts of the staff of the Museum of Art. And such a significant replenishment of the fund collection will help preserve the cultural heritage and will contribute to the development and promotion of museum and tourism activities in the Kirovograd region.

We hope our visitors will be delighted with new exhibits!

 

Maria Voichenko - researcher of the Funds Department of the Art Museum