International conference of art historians reviewed the catalogue of the largest private collection of Russian imperial porcelain owned by Elena Baturina
On September 19th, one of the most important cultural events of the year took place in the Great Palace of Tsaritsyno. The conference gathered art experts and was devoted to the issues of cataloguing private art collections with particular focus on the development of catalogue “War and Peace in Russian Porcelain. From the collection of Elena Baturina”.
Leading art historians, outstanding public figures, museum directors and curators discussed their vision and experience of working with private and museum collections of porcelain and other art objects.
The scientific section of the event featured presentations by Khazar Zeynalov , an art critic, deputy director of the Institute of Architecture and Art of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences; Igor Dukhan, PhD, Member of the European Society of Culture and the Academy of Architecture, Professor and Head of the Art Department of the Belarusian State University; Iraida Bott, Deputy Director for Scientific and Educational Work of the Tsarskoye Selo Museum-Reserve; and Pierre-Christian Brochet, curator of the Contemporary Art department at the School of Design and head of the HSE MUSEUMS LAB unit at the HSE Design Laboratory. All of the experts unanimously spoke of the grandeur of both the collection and the catalogue, as well as of their importance for art history in general, and the study of porcelain art in particular.
The reports by those art historians who could not attend the conference were read out by Natalia Sipovskaya, Director of the Institute of Art Studies. John Bowlt, founder and director of the Institute of Contemporary Russian Culture at the University of South Carolina and Nicoletta Misler, professor at the L’Orientale, art historian, international expert on Russian art, head of the Center for the Study of Russian Art at L’Orientale prepared a joint address to the conference: “We decided to pool our resources and say a few words about this extraordinary, unique collection of porcelain of the 19th century. Unique not only in quality, but also in its properties… The care, patience, enthusiasm and determination with which Elena Baturina assembled the collection, whether its individual pieces or entire services, are truly admirable. As for the catalogue raisonné: what a magnificent example of scholarship! What a monumental effort! Congratulations to all the editors and authors on completing such a pharaonic task – an example of persistent comparative research, a new intellectual perspective. The separate sections devoted to visual sources and styles are of particular interest, and testify to the almost detective search for facts, curatorial details and provenances that make up the inventory of Elena Baturina’s collection.”
Galina Tsvetkova, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Imperial Porcelain Factory – the successor of the traditions and keeper of the craftsmanship of imperial porcelain – spoke about the life of the factory today and its plans for the future, and of the pieces created according to the classical as well as new designs.
Natalia Sipovskaya, the scientific editor of the publication then spoke specifically about the work on “War and Peace in Russian Porcelain”. She reported that the catalogue was created on the basis of the world’s largest private collection of imperial porcelain owned by Elena Baturina. Developing the catalogue took seven years and involved more than 100 specialists, and the resulting publication became a breakthrough in the art history studies of porcelain.
The three volumes and 1,500 pages contain unique photographs and texts: the analysis of exceptionally important works from the time of Catherine the Great to the last years of the reign of Nicholas II enabled the authors to truly create an encyclopedia of imperial porcelain of Russia. Their findings are illustrated and supported by more than 1,200 graphic sources, 800 archival documents, 300 names of commissioners and initial owners, and about 50 projects of forms and original sketches published for the first time.
Three volumes, entitled in accordance with the items included “GLORY. Russian Imperial Porcelain: Presentation Pieces”, “WAR. Items Painted with Military Figures” and “PEACE. Ceremonial Porcelain of Russian Dinnerware” contain detailed descriptions of 1,500 items out of the 2,000 in the collection overall, and cover all significant events in the history of Russian porcelain, also reflecting the historical and artistic context, dates of creation, names of commissioners and recipients of porcelain gifts, history of their existence reconstructed from hundreds of archival sources.
A separate achievement of the authors is the scientific apparatus, which contains the study of forms and decorative elements of imperial porcelain – for example, the first complete albums with samples of uniforms of Nicholas’ I Russian Guard and Army, an Atlas of Porcelain Flora, an extensive study of Imperial porcelain factory marks are published for the first time
This became possible thanks to the painstaking collecting work of the owner, the experts said. Moreover, the analysis of the collection showed that it contains about 500 unique works that have no representation in any other collections.
According to the experts, the cost of such a collection is very difficult to estimate with any proximity: “Elena Baturina’s collection of Russian and European porcelain is not just large-scale and grandiose in its quantitative and qualitative composition, it is surprisingly cohesive. It is this integrity, consistency and structure of the collection that makes it extremely valuable. And I am not talking about the material value, although it is doubtless and impressive – only by rough estimates we are talking about a quarter of a billion dollars – but, first of all, about the historical, artistic, cultural and scientific value,” said Natalia Sipovskaya, Director of the Institute of Art Studies, PhD in History of Art.
English-language copies of the catalogue “War and Peace in Russian Porcelain. From the collection of Elena Baturina” have been submitted to all the major art and art history museums, academies and libraries all over the world. The authors are confident that the publication can facilitate not only new art history discoveries, but overall development of porcelain art.
