The exhibition called “Tea-Sets of the 17th-20th Centuries: Style of an Epoch” features the museum’s collections of Ukrainian-made china and faience. “The exhibition’s title is self-explanatory,” says the show organizer Liudmyla Bilous, the museum’s chief research supervisor, “and it indicates the main goal: to show the evolution of art and the work of masters. The exhibition is characterized by its specific artistic language, showing the evolution of the general European styles that were typical of certain historical periods.”
The pieces produced at the Korets (1784-1831), Horodnytsia (1807-1917) and Baranivka (founded in 1804) factories are excellent examples of classicism and its final phase, the Empire style. Visitors are captivated by the refined and graceful forms of these items. Tea-sets from the Volokytyn chinaware factory (1837-1867) were made in the style known as “second rococo” characterized by mannerism and elaborate ornamentation. The mid-20th century is represented by avant-garde trends, socialist realism, and folk traditions. Portraits of Joseph Stalin, Politburo members, and heroes of socialist labor are depicted on the tea-sets of that era. Some pieces are decorated with pictures of factory workers and collective farmers in the fields, the text of the Soviet Constitution, etc. An interesting period in the activity of the Kyiv-based experimental artistic ceramics factory (founded in 1924) was the creative work of a group of masters specializing in decorative painting from the village of Petrykivka in Dnipropetrovsk oblast.
“In general, art is the continuous interaction of traditions within the concept of contemporaneity. We can trace this throughout all the arts. Much to our regret, the traditions of chinaware production from past centuries are practically not being passed down today. Factories are now producing mass-producing crockery, and there are almost no extraordinary pieces,” says Andriana Volets, director of the Museum of Ukrainian Folk Decorative Art.
The exhibition consists of more than 5,000 items, many of which are being exhibited for the first time. “These masterpieces are priceless. In terms of artistic value, they are unsurpassable and easily rival Japanese and Chinese porcelain,” says Zoya Chehusova, scholarly secretary at the Ukrainian section of the International Association of Art Critics.
Unfortunately, these items have never been exhibited abroad, but museum curators hope that the world will one day see these collections.
