The Rossi Wing

Ceramics, Printed Fabrics and Lace of the 18th Century

Room III contains ceramics, printed fabrics and lace from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Sets of green and brown tiles demonstrate the typical decor of Russian stoves in the eighteenth century. The old reliefs were gradually replaced by painted tiles, completely covering the multi-tiered stoves. Entire stories in pictures unfolded on these tiles. The images were painted in coloured enamel on a damp white prime coating, creating a gleaming surface after baking in a kiln. A similar technique of painting on damp enamel was applied in utensils known as “tile ceramics.”

In the last third of the eighteenth century, Gzhel in Moscow Province emerged as a leading centre of folk pottery. This particular region boasted deposits of high-quality clay. In many villages, the peasants created majolica – crockery with designs painted on damp enamel – Gzhel jugs, pictures, tankards, figured vessels, plates and basins. In the early nineteenth century, in response to the appearance of a large quantity of English pottery on the Russian market with blue cobalt designs on white backgrounds, the Gzhel masters came up with their own unique material – faience with a similar decor.

At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, lacework emerged as an important phenomenon of folk art in the town of Galich in Kostroma Province. Lace was spun from refined coloured silks. Elegant fringes and towel ends decorated mirrors and icons in the “red corner” of people’s houses.