Milk jug (from a tea service)
Medium
Hard-paste porcelain
Dimensions
Height: 4 1/8 in. (10.5 cm)
Classification
Ceramics-Porcelain
Culture
Russian, St. Petersburg
Department
European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection, 1982
Accession Number
1982.60.170a, b
Tags
Art Historical Context
This elegant milk jug, part of a luxurious tea service, hails from the Imperial Por Manufactory in St Petersburg, Russia, around 1775. Established by Empress Elizabeth in 1744 and flourishing under Catherine the Great, manufactory produced porcelain rivaling the finest European workshops like Meissen and Svres. Tea services like this symbolized refined hospitality and imperial status during the Enlightenment era, when tea drinking became a fashionable social ritual across Europe's courts. Crafted from hard-paste porcelain—a durable, translucent material perfected by the factory through advanc...
About the Artist
Imperial Porcelain Manufactory, St. Petersburg · 1744–present
The Imperial Porcelain Manufactory in Saint Petersburg, founded in 1744 by Dmitry Ivanovich Vinogradov under the decree of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, marked Russia's entry into porcelain production as the third such enterprise in Europe after Meissen and Vienna. Vinogradov, a mining engineer educated in Saxony, developed the nation's first hard-paste porcelain formula using local materials, drawi...