Riga Porcelain Museum is the only institution in Latvia or indeed the world whose mission is researching, preserving and presenting Latvian porcelain art and its production processes. The museum’s collection is the largest of its kind in existence. The collection is particularly focussed on the second half of the 20th century, when Latvia was part of the USSR and production was subject to the specific Soviet Socialist ideological and economic model.

 

The cultural assets created in this period, both  mass consumer items and their design prototypes as well as unique individual works and series, are very familiar to people who lived in the Soviet system. They were part of everyday life at home, at work and in public spaces. However, with the passage of time, they are becoming increasingly obscure, as the objects become old fashioned and culturally irrelevant, and as they are physically damaged they are replaced by new things with their own meaning. Conversely, this situation allows us to rediscover the old items  by unearthing aspects which were unknown or unavailable at the time of their production, viewing them in a fresh context and revealing a new body of meaning which makes these things attractive to society once again. This is one of the key tasks of institutions working with cultural heritage, and Riga Porcelain Museum performs this mission in relation to local porcelain art and design.

 

The history of porcelain in Latvia is usually studied in terms of the chronology of political events, for example as a way of looking at changes in production conditions and social customs under the impact of occupation, or to analyse production processes under the dictates of the socialist ideology. By examining art history, the periods of political history also reveal changes in aesthetic markers: the socialist realism of the late 1940s gave way to the modernism of the Thaw in the 1950s and 1960s, followed by industrial functionalism in the 1970s, and then post-modern trends in the 1980s, i.e. eclectic design styles and historical references.

 

For the first time, the exhibition “Riga Porcelain” has grouped materials by their artists, i.e. the focus is on the creative person. Through the individual prism of the factory artist, the development of the artist’s personal style is examined as well as the impact of the respective period on the functionality of the objects and aesthetic solutions.

 

In 1953, a special unit was set up at Riga Porcelain Factory which was tasked with centrally and systematically organising the artistic side of production. Specifically, an Artistic Laboratory was established, which included the position of head artist. The laboratory employed a team of artists responsible for the forms and decors of the objects, which later came to symbolise Riga Porcelain Factory and its production style. Today these people would be called designers. At the time, terms such as “industrial artist”, “artistic constructor” etc. were used, or in light industry “factory artist.” In order to fill the monthly quotas set down by the Soviet planned economy, graduates of art schools and universities who were employed at the Artistic Laboratory or promoted to it from the assembly line had to design and offer as proposals for production an array of items and revise their appearance in line with orders from factory management and Republican and All Union institutions. Some of the proposals from the laboratory went into production and ended up in the hands of consumers, while others were preserved in their proposal form and morphed into next works of the respective designers, on occasion even becoming unique products created as part of a special order in a single copy or a small series.

 

The products of light industry reflect the assumptions of the time about practicality and beauty. But even though the appearance and utility of the objects reflected and reacted to the demands of the times, these items continued to be the results of the thoughts, imagination and work of specific, artistically educated designers. The Soviet ideology viewed the end results of production as collective achievements of which the whole of society could be proud. Because individuals remained anonymous, in recent times there has been little research about the individual, subjective or indeed human aspects of Soviet-era design. By contrast, today there is a fascination with the designer’s personality and the professional choices he or she made as a creative person with their own thoughts, views and sources of inspiration.

 

Nine artists have been selected for the “Riga Porcelain” exhibition: Zina Ulste, Levons Agadžanjans, Valdis De Būrs, Taisija Poluikēviča, Beatrise Kārkliņa, Ilga Dreiblate, Aija Mūrniece, Dace Blūma and Āris Segliņš.

These artists represent different generations. Some of them entered the industry in the 1950s, and they are regarded as the first generation to learn their craft in Soviet Latvia, in contrast  to masters still working in the factory who had come up at the Kuznetsov and Jessen porcelain factories in the first independent Republic of Latvia during interbellum. This first period of Soviet Latvian design was filled with creative striving, challenges and hopes for the future. Another group of exhibited artists came to the Artistic Laboratory in the 1960s and 1970s. In terms of allocated resources this was a golden age for the industry, yet artistically these two decades were marked by strict rules and limitations due to the rational planning methods imposed during the respective period; therefore, some artists left the factory and pursued art outside its walls. Two of the exhibited artists entered the factory in the 1980s during its final period of operation while Latvia was part of the USSR, and to this day they are working with porcelain, its art and design in Latvia and abroad.

 

The artists included in the “Riga Porcelain” exhibition worked both with forms and the artistic finishing of forms, i.e. décor. Naturally, over time their personal preferences crystalized; in some cases designer favoured sculptural work or creating forms, leaving Latvia’s design history with a rich assortment of tea, coffee and lunch sets, vases, jugs, flasks, ashtrays, dessert crockery and other items, whose décor was created by other colleagues. Some artists had skills and experience in creating forms, but they preferred painting and designing for mass produced decors. Priority in selecting the works for the exhibition has been given to those for which both form and décor are by the same artist. Nevertheless, the assortment was often updated in the factory through the use of décor, which was easier to implement than a new form. Therefore, part of the exhibited works are ones for which the form and the decor were created by two different artists.

 

Naturally, the factory’s artistic team was much larger than just the nine artists selected for the exhibition. Over half a century, many newcomers came  to the factory from local art and trade schools as well as tertiary institutions and art academies in Latvia and other Soviet republics. These artists specialised in different forms and types of industrial art, but they formed friendly bonds and influenced each other’s sense of style. Some had short but colourful careers at the factory before severing ties with it completely, while others left the factory but maintained their links with it by returning as individual artists who realised their artistic ideas there. And some spent their entire professional lives at the factory. What the artists highlighted in the exhibition share is that their lives were closely entwined with the factory, and they are part of the core of designers who established and influenced its style.

 

In the picture: Zina Ulste. Mocha set “Vita”, mass production, Riga Porcelain Factory, late 1980s. Collection of the Riga Porcelain museum. Photo: Gvido Kajons.