[RUSSIAN IMPERIAL PORCELAIN FACTORY 1744-1904]. Imperatorskii farforovyi zavod: 1744-1904 / La Manufacture Imperiale de Porcelaine à St. Petersbourg

St. Petersburg, Russia: Izdanio upravleniia Imperatorskimi [Published by Golike & Vil'borg for the Imperial Factory], 1906. First Edition. Large and very heavy folio (370 x 275 mm). COMPLETE: viii, 422, plus 63 pages, including French summary ("La manufacture impériale de porcelaine à St. Petersbourg") on pp. 325-372. Photogravure frontispiece + 12 mounted heliograph plates numbered I-XII on facing tissue-guards + 1 chromolithograph plate showing 40 different makers' marks and monograms, 493 monochrome illustrations and 8 line-drawings within the text. Mid-twentieth (Swedish?) half calf, spine title lettered in Russian (spine a trifle scuffed, minor wear to headcap, spine leather with some speckling), decorated paper over boards, original gold-printed wrappers bound in (soiled, back wrapper with two large infills). Overall in excellent condition, certainly the nicest copy we've seen. MASSIVE AND MAGNIFICENT STATE-SPONSORED PUBLICATION, BEING THE OFFICIAL HISTORY OF THE IMPERIAL RUSSIAN PORCELAIN MANUFACTORY, PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED.

Ours is a complete copy in excellent condition, completely unspoiled, with all tissue guards present which are essential as they identify the heliogravure plates opposite. This work remains indispensible for historians of Imperial Russian porcelain and is perhaps the most monumental illustrated history of its subject. Still frequently cited, it is a fact that most copies of this original edition, whether in public or private collections, are in some way defective and/or damaged, unlike ours.

"The history of this enterprise [i.e. Imperial porcelain manufactory] is an important part of the general history of the Russian applied arts and is of great help for students of the national crafts of the 18th-19th centuries. [...] The book had a limited circulation. It is difficult to find a copy of it in a decent state" (Vengerov, Staraia Russkaia Kniga, 78).

Treated chronologically according to the reigns of the Czars, this fundamental work documents the Imperial Porcelain Factory in St. Petersburg during 260 years; the factory was founded in 1744 by the chemist Dmitry Ivanovich Vinogradov by order by Empress Elisabeth, daughter of Peter the Great. During its first decades, the factory manufactured exclusively for the Romanov family and the Imperial Court.

The editor was the manager of the Imperial porcelain factories, Baron Nikolai Borisovich von Wolf, a.k.a. Vol'f (1866-1940), who was "not only a ceramic expert, but an artist of cultured taste" (Source: The Jeweler's Circular 74:1 [1917] p. 99). Wolf also includes a chapter on makers' marks.

Solon writes: "A state-supported establishment, the Imperial Factory of St. Petersburg has not, as a rule, disposed of its limited [porcelain] productions through the usual channels of the trade. Hard porcelain was made from the beginning; examples of it are rarely seen in the collections. Although chiefly consisting in imitations of the leading Oriental and European types, some of the choicest specimens offer particular interest. Many pieces decorated with portraits of the Imperial family, Russian landscapes, military groups and popular scenes, testify to the care that was taken to impart to the ware a national character."

The importance and rarity of this original edition is attested by the 2008 reprint, a grossly inferior production marred by unsightly and completely unsatisfactory reproductions of the twelve beautiful heliograph plates and 493 in-text illustrations.

Two copies of the 1906 edition are currently available on the market, their asking prices being $8900 + shipping from the U.K. (quarter vellum, slightly worn label on spine) and $9300 + shipping from Germany (half calf, spine rubbed with gold-tooled spine partly peeled off, corners and edges heavily rubbed and slightly peeled). We mention international shipping charges because the book alone weighs 13.5 lbs = 6.1 kg (!)

REFERENCE: Louis Marc Solon, Ceramic Literature: An Analytical Index to the Works Published in All Languages (1910) p. 468.

PROVENANCE: Paul Forestovsky, his gift in 1945 to --> The family Andersson, Stockholm --> Thomas Heneage Rare Books UK, sold in 1985 (for $1,380) to --> James Vaughn (1939-2022), great bibliophile whose library included the finest mathematics collection ever formed by a private individual: 125 rare and foundational books in the history of mathematics were donated to the Harry Ransom Center in 2021; our volume was kept in Vaughn's home in River Oaks, Houston, and sold to us by his estate through the agency W.P. Watson. Vaughn funded the Mathematical Association of America and helped support the solution of the 300-year-old math puzzle, Fermat's Last Theorum. With Vaughn's original invoice loosely inserted. With J.M.V. bookplate.