Abstract
The purpose of the article is to determine the use of four items from the collections of the National Museum of History of Ukraine and the Kyiv Mykola Bazhan Literary Memorial Apartment Museum. The research methodology includes axiological, hermeneutical, stylistic, typological, and the method of art studies analysis, thanks to which we have defined the artful identity of four faience moulds from these collections. The scientific novelty lies in a fresh approach to the function of these items, their correlation with archival data about the production line of the Kyiv Mezhyhiria Faience Factory of different years. Conclusions. By the descriptions, it is now possible to correlate the Factory’s product units with the positions of the so-called “blind lists” of the collection creator for the former “Third State Museum” of Kyiv O. Hansen (now they are stored in the Central State Archives of Supreme Bodies of Power and Government of Ukraine), where one pair of shells on white legs for 50 rubles was under No 567. By verifying the data of the funds of the capital museums during 2018–2020, we succeeded to find two pairs of compotiers or blancmange moulds, in particular, two standard sizes of about half a litre, 600 grams of capacity and 800–1000 ml of volume. If they are compotiers, they were produced at the Factory in the 1820s and 1850s in at least two sizes, while the blancmange moulds had three sizes in the Factory’s product line, so it is more likely to be bowls of this segment of the largest and medium-sized items. The studied items were previously defined as “fruit bowls in the form of a shell” in the collection of the National Museum of History of Ukraine and “bowls in the form of a shell” in the Kyiv Mykola Bazhan Literary Memorial Apartment Museum’ collection. We have found that they are the moulds for blancmange near to traditional forms of compotiers for desserts and candies serving.
Highlights
Home-produced porcelain and faience of the “classical” period dated to the late 18th – 19th centuries, remains unstudied
We have found that they are the moulds for blancmange near to traditional forms of compotiers for desserts and candies serving
The purpose of the article is to determine the essence of the purpose of two pairs of faience items produced by the Kyiv Mezhyhiria Faience Factory in the form of a shell on four legs, two sizes from the collections of the National Museum of History of Ukraine and Kyiv Mykola Bazhan Literary Memorial Apartment Museum
Summary
Home-produced porcelain and faience of the “classical” period dated to the late 18th – 19th centuries (sometimes early 20th century), remains unstudied. In connection with this topic, it is worth mentioning the publication of the Museum-Reserve of Alexander Pushkin “Mikhailovskoye”, Pskov region, on dessert serving pieces, which are stored in the specified collection of the first half of the 19th century It describes the ingredients of the fashionable dessert milk pudding with almonds, nutmeg, cream and rice flour, sometimes with vanilla, as well as the specifics of its serving (Mould for blancmange, undated) (Fig. 1). Compotiers or blancmange moulds by the Factory, which are stored in the collection of the National Museum of History of Ukraine, appeared in the centre of the headpiece of the opening page of the article on Mezhyhiria faience by Kyiv museum leading figure and art critic Yevhen Kuzmin, published in Journal “Art” in 1911. He emphasised the aesthetic expressiveness and perfection of such things, their significance as symbolic forms of domestic production of delicate faience and porcelain in the vicinity of Kyiv in the 19th century
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