Figurine “Pioneer Girl with Doves”

Technique: Porcelain, painting, gilding.
Size: Height 20 cm.

Figurine “Girl with Doves”. Sculptor: G. S. Stolbova, painted by L. K. Blak. USSR. Lomonosov Porcelain Factory in Leningrad (LFZ). 1952–1959. Porcelain, overglaze painting, gilding. Height: 20 cm. Marks: dark blue printed “LFZ”; blue printed “1st grade”; printed in black “27”; impressed in the paste “VI”. Minor manufacturing defect on the hem of the skirt and the right leg, wear to the gilding, minor soiling.    This figurine is published in the book “Lomonosov Porcelain Factory in Leningrad 1944–2004”, Vol. 2, author N. S. Petrova, “Global View” publishing house, St. Petersburg, 2007, p. 558.    Galina Sergeevna Stolbova – sculptor; from 1949 she worked at the Leningrad Porcelain Factory. She was born in 1908 in Glazov, Vyatka Governorate. In 1926 she graduated from the Industrial Art Institute in Vyatka, and in 1937 from the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Stolbova's teachers were the sculptors V. A. Sinaisky and A. T. Matveev. A happy Soviet childhood is the main theme of Galina Sergeevna's work.    Lyubov Karlovna Blak (1908–1983) – artist, porcelain specialist. She was born in Moscow. In 1930 she graduated from the ceramics department of the Leningrad Art and Industry Technical School in the speciality “Technician Ceramic Artist”. From 1931 to 1974 she worked at LFZ as a porcelain painter. She is the author of many original compositions of her own. In her early works of the 1930s, subjects from Russian fairy tales and themes from the life of the peoples of the Soviet East predominate.    In 1932 N. M. Suetin became chief artist at LFZ, and over time, under his influence, Lyubov Blak's painterly manner of decoration changed. Expressive painting with carefully executed miniatures forming a single whole with the ornamental decoration gave way to an ordered composition in which the image clearly occupies its own place on the surface of the object and is separated from the ornament, and in a number of cases even takes on the character of an almost easel picture. L. Blak signed her works in several variants: “Blak”, “khud. Blak”, “L. Blak”, “Blak L”, usually with the date. Among the artist's best-known works, the following deserve particular mention: the tea services “Rest”, “Sport”, “Budyonnovtsy”, “East of the USSR”, “Sportswomen”; the vases “Red Cavalry”, “Haymaking”, “Celebration in Uzbekistan”.