Petrograd State Porcelain Manufactory, Lydia Shekhotikhina-potapova, Agitfarfor, 1922

STATE PORCELAIN MANUFACTORY (Former Imperial Manufactory), Petrograd and Lydia SHEKHOTIKHINA-POTAPOVA (1886–1967)
Plate in Porcelain with Hand-Painted Polychrome Decoration, Entitled "A Tatar Man and a Tatar Woman" (or Tatar Family in Petrograd), Depicting a Couple in Traditional Costume with a Swaddled Child, against a Background of the Winter Palace and Alexander Column. Calligraphed Cyrillic Inscriptions around the Rim: "ПЕТРОГРАД 1922 ГОДА" (Petrograd, Year 1922)
After a design by Lydia SHEKHOTIKHINA-POTAPOVA (1886–1967). Signed with the artist's monogram on the reverse and marked with the hammer and sickle with the date 1922.
Russia / USSR, Soviet Propaganda Porcelain Period (Agitfarfor), 1922.
D 21 cm
Perfect state of preservation.

A major figure of the avant-garde and Soviet agitation porcelain alongside Sergei Chekhonin, Lydia Shekhotikhina-Potapova marked the early years of the Petrograd State Manufactory with her poetic creations blending popular, ethnographic motifs and revolutionary fervor. Executed in the aftermath of the civil war on Imperial-period porcelain blanks repurposed, this plate illustrates the diversity of the peoples of the young Soviet Republic gathered in Petrograd. A similar example of this emblematic model is preserved in the collections of the Hermitage Museum.

This extremely rare plate in porcelain from the Petrograd State Manufactory by Lydia Shekhotikhina-Potapova constitutes a precious testimony to the golden age of Soviet agitation porcelain, uniting the historical interest of its iconography with perfect quality of execution.