San Francisco Ceramic Circle Illustrated Lecture
The Glamorous Age of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna
and Early Russian Porcelain
Ekaterina Khmelnitskaya
Curator, Russian Porcelain Collection, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
KORET AUDITORIUM, deYOUNG MUSEUM, GOLDEN GATE PARK.
The Koret Auditorium is on the lower level of the deYoung Museum accessed from the underground garage.
The garage is accessed from Fulton Street at 10th Avenue and costs $4.00 per hour.
About the talk: Elizabeth Petrovna ( 1709 - 1762 ), daughter of Peter the Great, ascended to the throne in 1741 and established the most glittering court in Russian history. The establishment of porcelain manufacture in Russia is thought to have been a personal whim of Empress Elizabeth. In the XVIII century, porcelain manufactories were owned by every European royal household pursuing prestige and splendor and the Empress wished also to have such a factory. The first items produced at the Petersburg Porcelain Factory were made for the entertainment of Her Majesty Elizabeth Petrovna. During her rule, porcelain never left her palaces and attracted less attention from its practical use as by its rarity, its aura of inaccessibility and the mystique of its creation. This lecture will explore this fascinating Tsarina and the porcelain artworks created during her reign.
About the speaker: Dr. Ekaterina (Tina) Khmelnitskaya is a curator of the Russian Porcelain and Ceramics collection of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Now she is a Fulbright Scholar at the Library of Congress and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford’s Center on Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies.
A 2001 graduate of St. Petersburg State University, her doctoral dissertation in 2007 was on the styles of the interiors of the palace of the Romanov Grand Duke Vladimir. Since 2001 she has worked at the State Hermitage Museum, as a curator of Russian porcelain. She has received research support for work in Germany from the German Chancellor Fellowship and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and from the Max-Planck-Institut for research in Italy—Florence in 2010 and Rome in 2011.
Tina is the author of more than 40 scholarly publications, including guidebooks as well as scholarly articles and books on the porcelain collection of the State Hermitage Museum. She participated in organizing over twenty Hermitage exhibitions, including exhibitions in Japan, Germany, and Scotland as well as Russia. She was in charge of two porcelain exhibitions: “Under the Imperial Monogram: Porcelain from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum” (with Irina Bagdasarova) at the Kremlin in Moscow, 2007; and “Heraldry on Russian Porcelain” (with Irina Bagdasarova) at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg in 2008.
She has made presentations on the porcelain collection of the Hermitage Museum and on her current research devoted to the Russian sculptors who were affiliated with the work of the Imperial Porcelain Factory and who immigrated after 1917 and continued their work in Europe and in the United States. Tina has been an invited presenter at the International Ceramic Fair and Seminar in London (2008 and 2010); the Kunsthistorisches Institut (Florence, 2010); Biblioteca Hertziana (Rome, 2011) and others.
Next SFCC Programs
Friday 5/4/through Sunday 5/6 40th Anniversary Seminar:
Stirring the Pots: 25 Years of Change in the Understanding and Attribution of English Porcelain
with 8 talks by speakers Anton Gabszewicz, Maurice Hillis, J.V.G. Mallet and Errol Manners
For seminar details, pricing and registration information go to www.patricianantiques.com/sfcc2012seminar.pdf
Saturday 6/23 SFCC Summer Social ...... Members and their guests only event