- Museum number
- 1988,0609.2
- Description
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Plate; hard-paste porcelain, glazed white and painted in overglaze colours of black and matt grey; a rectangle of matt grey is placed off-centre and surrounded by lines and blocks of grey and black on a white ground; the rim entirely black.
- Production date
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1917 (made;pre)
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1923 (decorated)
- Dimensions
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Diameter: 23.70 centimetres
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- Curator's comments
- Text from J. Rudoe 'Decorative Arts 1850-1950. A catalogue of the British Museum collection'. 2nd ed. 1994. no. 34.
Chashnik was a pupil of Malevich at the Vitebsk Practical Art Institute from 1920 to 1922, when he followed Malevich and his fellow-student, Suetin, to Petrograd. He worked with Suetin (see Decorative Arts 1850-1950 Cat. 278-80) at the State Porcelain Factory from 1923 to 1924; he then assisted Malevich in his work on architectural models at the State Institute of Artistic Culture (Inkhuk).
Chashnik's output was sadly cut short by his early death at the age of twenty-seven. The revolutionary use of a colour range limited to black, grey and white is characteristic of Chashnik's Suprematist designs for porcelain; see Oxford and London 1984, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford and Crafts Council London, 'Art into production: Soviet Ceramics and Textiles'.17, no. 24, for a dinner service of 1923 in the Museum of the Lomonossov Porcelain Factory, Leningrad; Lobanov-Rostovsky, N. 'Revolutionary Ceramics: Soviet Porcelain 1919-1927, New York 1990, nos 150-51, in the same collection. The design on the British Museum plate, with its solid black rim, disguises the traditional shape on which it is painted; Suprematist designs are not always so well suited to the shapes that they decorate.
For a group of Chashnik's designs for the decoration of plates, together with porcelain plates painted with his designs, see 'Ilja Tschashnik', exhibition catalogue, Kunstmuseum, Diisseldorf, 1978, nos 32-47, pp. 16-17 and pp. 63-7 (the designs from a private collection, Diisseldorf, formerly Chashnik estate). See also Andreeva, I., 'Soviet Porcelain 1920-1930', Moscow 1975, pls 225-9; Franzke, I., 'Russisches Porzellan mit Suprematisischem Dekor im Badisches Landesmuseum Karlesruhe', Keramos, Heft 78, October 1977, 23-30, figs 2 and 6; Franzke, I., 'Die Suprematistem und russisches Porzellan der zwanziger Jahre', Pantheon II, 1982, Jg. XL. 92-8, figs 8-9 and pl. 11.
- Location
- On display (G48/dc4)
- Condition
- Plate slightly warped in the firing.
- Associated events
- Associated Event: Russian Revolution
- Acquisition date
- 1988
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- 1988,0609.2
