Designs
One of Adamovich's 1921 designs, Kapital was selected by British Museum director Neil MacGregor as object 96 in the A History of the World in 100 Objects, a series of radio programmes that started in 2010 as a collaboration between the BBC and the British Museum. The plate that was chosen had been designed in 1921 and shows a revolutionary worker stamping on the word "Kapital" in the Futurist style. The plate shows the worker releasing industrial power to benefit the people and not capitalists.
His 1921 designs include He Who Works Not Eats Not, which illustrates the commitment to the revolution. The design on an approximately ten inch porcelain plate shows the head of Lenin, Red Star and ration books.
The "Kapital" plate that was chosen for the BBC had actually been made twenty years before, in 1901, when the porcelain factory's production was reserved entirely for the Russian royal family. These plates had been stockpiled and were awaiting decoration. The revolutionary worker shown on the plate was meant to be releasing the revolutionary power to the workers. This plate was also being released from the exclusivity of Royal patronage and given to a wider audience.
The 1921 plates were issued by the State Porcelain Factory and they were hand painted over the existing glaze. The plates would not have withstood regular use and were intended mainly for decoration. The plates carried a hammer and sickle as their makers' mark, but they also carried the mark from their original imperial manufacture twenty years before. At this time, the Russian people were starving, and what small production still took place in these factories was at least partially intended for export. It was noted that it was best to not paint over the original firing marks, as they commanded a premium from purchasers outside Russia.
Adamovich was later employed for painting designs on Moscow's buildings, and he died in 1947. In his lifetime he had exhibited at a number of international exhibitions, and in 1925 he won a medal at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs in Paris.
Read more about this topic: Mikhail Adamovich
Famous quotes containing the word designs:
“He began therefore to invest the fortress of my heart by a circumvallation of distant bows and respectful looks; he then entrenched his forces in the deep caution of never uttering an unguarded word or syllable. His designs being yet covered, he played off from several quarters a large battery of compliments. But here he found a repulse from the enemy by an absolute rejection of such fulsome praise, and this forced him back again close into his former trenches.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“His designs were strictly honourable, as the phrase is; that is, to rob a lady of her fortune by way of marriage.”
—Henry Fielding (1707–1754)
“I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)