The Presidential Library showed a new film "A Nation in Porcelain"

On March 31, 2023 the Presidential Library hosted a screening of a new documentary film "A Nation in Porcelain", filmed with the support of the Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives.

The film tells about the unique collection of miniature sculptures "Peoples of Russia", created on the initiative of Nicholas II at the Imperial Porcelain Factory in St. Petersburg.

Work on the production of a collection that would capture all the nations and nationalities living on the territory of the state began in 1907. It was based on the first and only population census in the Russian Empire. The sculptor of the project was Pavel Kamensky, the chief artist of the Imperial Theatres, who perfectly understood the importance of details when creating costumes. It was also necessary to take into account the peculiarities of the physique, height, facial features, hair color of a particular nationality.

Due to the reliability of ethnographic and anthropological sources, this collection of miniature sculptures can be compared to a historical document in which the various nationalities inhabiting Russia are described in the “language of a porcelain”. Each figurine (their height is approximately 40 cm) was made by hand, their mass production was impossible. The preliminary list included 400 male and female figurines, but the First World War, and then the October Revolution, prevented the realization of the plan. To date, 74 original miniatures are known to exist, most of which are in the largest museums in our country.

Director General of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the Russian Ethnographic Museum Yulia Kupina, Director of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Kunstkamera) Andrei Golovnev and other experts tell about the “Peoples of Russia” collection in the film.

The authors of the script for the documentary film "A Nation in Porcelain" produced by the PMG company with the participation of the TELEINVEST studio are Innokenty Ivanov and Sergey Pochin. They are also the director and producer of the project.

This film is not similar to art history counterparts. According to the film authors, presenting a unique porcelain series of miniature sculptures of the peoples of Russia, they sought to tell the viewer about the very idea of reproducing the national diversity of our Fatherland. This idea was born long before the initiative of the last Russian monarch and remains relevant to this day. It was important for the creators of the film to show that our country is still multinational and each nationality preserves its traditions. The porcelain collection that survived all the wars and revolutions is still like an ethnography textbook, which has absorbed the description of several dozen nationalities inhabiting Russia.