Works of Palekh miniature painters in the field of porcelain decoration (Palekh porcelain)

Lavrov Dmitrii Evgen'evich ORCID: 0000-0002-2607-7220 PhD in Art History Senior Educator, the department of Museology, Saint Petersburg State University 199034, Russia, g. Saint Petersburg, nab. Universitetskaya, 7-9, aud. 91 agitlak@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The history of Palekh art porcelain belongs to the least studied pages of the annals of the craft. As you know, the turn of the 1920s - 1930s for Palekh was marked by the search for all kinds of techniques and types of fine art (up to the painting of glass, parchment and pebbles), however, of all such experiments with the basis for artistic writing, it was the experiments with porcelain in the history of Palekh art that turned out to be the longest and most persistent.

The first experiments of the Palekh Artel of ancient painting in porcelain painting date back to the winter of 1925-1926 . Decorative plates were used as a semi-finished product, on which tempera paints were applied with varnish coating and subsequent firing ^{[11, p. 194]}. Despite some success at domestic and foreign exhibitions, these experiments were rather experimental in nature: firstly, since egg paints with varnish do not hold on porcelain, such products were suitable only as decorative objects; and, secondly, the coating of white porcelain with a yellow transparent lacquer layer looked like a dubious innovation from an artistic point of view.

In the spring of 1929, porcelain painting experiments were continued in the laboratory of the Museum of Ceramics of Moscow ^{[3, p. 211]}, and in their conduct the Palekh craft was assisted by its influential patrons – a member of the Board of the People's Commissariat of Trade Ya. S. Ganetsky and the head of the handicraft and art department of the Upper Volga branch of Gostorg F. Yu. Zhakhovskaya. At the end of May 1929 (Protocol No. 9 of May 28), the collection of the Artel of Ancient Painting sent Palekh artists I. I. Golikov and I. M. Bakanov to the Museum of Ceramics, and six months later, in the winter of 1929-1930, the Artel sent to the museum laboratory a second group of Palekh artists consisting of A.V. Kotukhin, I. V. Markichev and D. N.. Butorina ^{[11, p. 194]}. The training of both groups took place for three months according to the program developed by the director of the Museum of Ceramics S. Z. Mograchev together with the famous art critic A. V. Bakushinsky. Instead of egg tempera, paints traditional for porcelain painting were used, instead of the main body writing, there were lessirovki, similar to the icon painting technique of "plavi", close to papier-mache painting. Despite a number of shortcomings made due to the excessive brevity of training (for example, the Palekh masters were not involved in conducting some necessary experiments to study the properties of paints that require different firing temperatures), the experience gained turned out to be literally priceless for them, and communication with the specialists of the Ceramics Museum in 1929-1930 helped the Palekhans to understand the specifics more deeply difficult porcelain production, despite the fact that the Palekh master I. M. Bakanov later recalled rather skeptically about the Moscow experiments: "We made a lot of objects, but we learned the firing technique poorly – a lot of practice is required here. As it seemed to us, even in the museum, experienced people, the firing was not very satisfactory" ^{[1, pp. 119-120]}.  

At the same time, in the summer of 1930, at the Palekh Art Vocational School at the local Artel, the training of porcelain painting was included in the training system for future craft masters ^{[12, p. 60]}. A porcelain painting department was created, which in the 1930s, in particular, was completed by famous Palekh artists Tamara Ivanovna Zubkova, Alexander Alexandrovich Gorev, Anna Pavlovna Khokhlova.

In the summer of 1931, a muffle furnace for firing porcelain (Gzhel type) was installed in the building of the Artel of Ancient Painting, but the resulting products did not reach high quality: after firing, the desired gloss was not obtained ^{[4, p. 260]}; in addition, an important disadvantage of the furnace was the lack of a thermometer. At the same time, in the first half of the 1930s, a local museum (the State Museum of Palekh Art) was organized in Palekh, and according to the schemes of the future exposition proposed by art critic A.V. Bakushinsky, it is clear what a significant role he assigned to porcelain paintings in the art of the future Palekh (so, A.V. Bakushinsky planned that porcelain and faience Palekh wares form one of the two departments of the museum, the second department will be made up of the Palekh lacquers themselves) ^{[9, p. 50]}.

At the exhibition "The Art of Palekh" organized in Moscow by the All-Industrial Council and the Cultural Association in January-February 1932, the Artel of Ancient Painting presents porcelain works (I. M. Bakanov's dish "The Song of Stepan Razin" 1929, D. N. Butorin's plate "The Link of the city with the Village" 1930 and others) ^{[2, p. 21]}. In addition, the Artel, being without an instructor and still having an imperfect oven (without a thermometer), paints and burns several porcelain products especially for the exhibition. The result, according to A.V. Bakushinsky, turned out to be rather unsuccessful. In his report sent to the Moscow Institute of Art and Handicraft Industry, the art critic, in particular, points out the following technical and artistic mistakes made by the Palekh Artel: "The things sent to the exhibition were spoiled in color, partly underburned, partly burnt, paints without gloss, cloudy… The ornament is still heavy and too coarse for porcelain, the painting itself is overloaded with gold; the rigidity and graphicity of the main impression ..." ^{[11, p. 197]}

In May 1932, A. Sidorov, an authorized representative of the patron of the craft, A.M. Gorky, came to Palekh to fulfill the promise given by the famous writer to financially help the Palekh Artel ^{[6, p. 52]}. A. Sidorov is actively working to improve working conditions and organize a local museum in the village, but he is also interested in the shortage of a porcelain firing instructor in the craft A. Sidorov makes a trip to the Dulevsky Porcelain Factory, and as a result, two master instructors come to Palekh in July 1932 to arrange the proper firing of local porcelain ^{[11, p. 197]}. After staying in Palekh for about 2 weeks, the instructors showed local artists various technological stages of firing products with various paints, after which the quality of the batches of porcelain vessels produced by the Artel significantly increased. A. V. Bakushinsky also carried out additional activities to help the craft in the development of porcelain production in the same period (summer 1932): so, already in August 1932, as a full member of the Moscow Institute of Art and Handicraft Industry, he made a business trip to Palekh in order to survey the current state of porcelain production and artistic consultations with local artists ^{[11, p. 197]}.   

 Nevertheless, despite a number of successes of the Palekh craft in the development of porcelain production in the second half of the 1920s - early 1930s, it was never put on an industrial basis. The matter, in fact, was reduced to the production of trial batches of porcelain products for a particular exhibition and to periodic attempts to radically improve the technology by inviting master instructors or to improve the skills of local craftsmen. A significant reason for this situation was the fact that there were no technical conditions in Palekh for the production of raw materials for porcelain, which had to be brought. The Palekh artel, in addition, had an extremely poor assortment of repeatable replicated forms of porcelain products (decorative plates, vases), which, of course, should have had a negative impact on consumer demand for such products. An additional important factor in the cessation of active searches for improving the technology of porcelain production was the break with the Palekh craft of A. S. Bakushinsky, which occurred in 1933 ^{[5, p. 254]} The analysis of the reasons for such a gap is beyond the scope of our study ^{[15, p. 181]}, however, it is obvious that the loss of such an active and authoritative art critic, who had previously invaluable services to the craft, could not fail to hit the continuation of the search by Palekh artists in the field of making and painting porcelain. Finally, a serious economic crisis that began in Palekh in 1934-1935 ^{[17, p. 134]} and continued until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War played a significant role in the attenuation of attempts to introduce porcelain production into the life of the craft.

One of the consequences of these problems was the fact that graduates of the Palekh Art School, who graduated from the porcelain painting department in the 1930s, changed their trade after completing their studies and left to work for large porcelain factories. Thus, the Palekh artists Alexander Nikolaevich Salabanov and Ivan Pavlovich Suslov, having graduated from the Palekh Vocational School in the first half of the 1930s, worked as masters of porcelain painting at the Dulevsky factory. A student of the Palekh vocational school, a local hereditary painter Nikolai Alexandrovich Khrenov (1916-1994), graduated from the porcelain painting department in 1933, after that he worked as an artist at the Dulevsky factory for more than fifty years, giving many highly artistic examples of the art of porcelain painting (the Vityaz dish of the 1950s; the Dachnoye dish of 1981; both - from private collections).

The famous artist Tamara Ivanovna Zubkova (1917-1973), having graduated from the department of the Palekh Porcelain Painting School in 1938, worked for several years on distribution at the Red Porcelain factory in the Novgorod region ^{[17, p. 158]}, as well as the Leningrad Porcelain Factory, returning to Palekh only in 1940, T. I. Zubkova made herself famous in the Palekh craft, by the masterful manufacture of ornaments ^{[10, p. 229]} and numerous products of lacquer miniatures on lyrical "song" themes, however, she periodically turned to porcelain painting. Such, for example, is the porcelain vase "Kolkhoz Abundance" in the collection of the State Museum of Palekh Art ^{[14, p. 72]}, painted by T. I. Zubkova in 1951 (the semi-finished product was made at the Leningrad Porcelain Factory named after Lomonosov). One can argue with the trends of easelism in the composition of the vase, admitted by the artist (as well as with the idea of covering the white porcelain surface with a dark blue case color), but there is also no doubt that T. I. Zubkova's rare compositional flair, which allowed her to fill the surface of the product with plant and decorative ornaments extremely successfully. As we can see, technical and economic difficulties cannot detract from the artistic merits of porcelain products painted by paleshans.

Anna Pavlovna Khokhlova (1918-1982), who studied in the 1930s at the department of porcelain painting at the Palekh School, had a similar fate. After graduating in 1938, A. P. Khokhlova, like T. I. Zubkova, worked on distribution at the Krasny Farforist factory, returning to Palekh only in 1943 ^{[17, p. 158]} because of the war. In the future, A. P. Khokhlova worked fruitfully in the more popular field of Palekh lacquer miniatures, however, like T. I. Zubkova, she periodically turned to painting porcelain products (porcelain plate "Song about the merchant Kalashnikov" of the 1950s from a private collection, decorative vases "Snow Maiden" and "Fish" of 1958 from the collection The State Museum of Palekh Art ^{[13, p. 131]}). It is noteworthy that the porcelain painting in the post-war period was also addressed by those Palekh artists who did not study at the porcelain painting department at the Palekh School in the 1930s (the vase "Twelve Months" of the 1950s by Yu. P. Kozlov from a private collection, the dish "Victory" 1967 by K. S. Bokarev from the collection The State Museum of Palekh Art).  

The famous Palekh artist Nikolai Mikhailovich Zinoviev (1888-1979), who began painting porcelain in the era of creative experiments of the Palekh organization, in the 1930s, did this until the end of the 1970s, personally firing the products painted by him in a homemade small oven ^[8]. Considering porcelain as his favorite material, N. M. Zinoviev throughout his long creative career turned to both propaganda (such, for example, his porcelain plate "Airplane Carpet" in 1935 in the collection of the State Museum of Palekh Art, depicting a worker and a peasant on a Soviet airplane decorated with red stars) and more familiar to Palekh lyrical themes (square porcelain tile "Winter Troika" 1935 from the collection of the same museum). So, during the post-war period, artistic experiments on porcelain painting were quite common among many Palekh artists, despite the obvious lack of technical conditions for the mass introduction of porcelain production in the Palekh craft.

In the 1970s – 1980s, some attempts were made to revive the industry of porcelain production and painting in the Palekh craft, characteristic of the 1920s - 1930s. Nevertheless, in the 1980s, one of the leading masters and connoisseurs of the craft, Chairman of the Palekh Organization of the Union of Artists of the RSFSR V. M. Khodov in in one of these interviews, paleshan was skeptical about the possibility of returning to porcelain painting, pointing out both the insufficiency of technical conditions (lack of raw materials, kilns for firing) and the qualifications of local craftsmen: "The work in porcelain painting in recent decades has been mainly experimental in nature and further strength tests did not go. In addition, these works were sometimes undertaken by masters who did not yet fully own Palekh funds ...The complexity of the issue of resuming porcelain painting in Palekh, it seems to me, lies in the complexity of economic, technical and other conditions, which formulate in sum the question of expediency (highlighted by me. – D. L.)" ^[16]. Unfortunately, life has fully confirmed the correctness of the prophetic words of V. M. Khodov, who was equally pessimistic about other prospects of the Palekh fishery ^{[7, p. 131]}. After the collapse of the Palekh art organization in the late 1980s ^{[5, p. 286]}, the question of the development of the porcelain industry in Palekh finally lost its relevance: since then, it has been about the physical survival of the Palekh craft itself.