Russian revolutionary plate
St Petersburg, Russia, (decorated) 1921
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This painted plate with its striking design was made in Russia at the Imperial Porcelain Factory, St Petersburg in 1901.
Twenty years later, after the Russian revolution had taken place and the Imperial family had been deposed, it was decorated in the same manufacturing works. By this time, the works had been renamed the State Porcelain Factory and the city of St Petersburg was known as Petrograd.
This plate is a propaganda piece for the Communist revolution in Russia. To the left, a worker, painted in the revolutionary colour red, tramples a Russian word underfoot. The Cyrillic letters running across the plate from left to right spell out the word Kapital. Or capitalism, the economic system the new regime sought to eradicate.
Communist Russia would no longer have private individuals creating and distributing goods. The means of economic production would be brought into the people’s hands, and the red factory in the background was now owned by the state.
The colour red and the youthful figure of the worker marching toward a bright future with a tool in his hand are visual motifs found on many decorative objects from this era. It is a sign of a dynamic and modern state which has just reinvented itself.
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