Saints, Sashes, and Ciphers: Russian Porcelain Easter eggs
Russian Collection at Dorich House, Kingston.
This talk by Louise Hardiman will begin by looking closely at five porcelain Easter eggs from the Dorich House Museum collections. Louise will then share some of the research findings from the museum’s recent decorative arts cataloguing project, funded by Art Fund and the Decorative Arts Society. She will link the history of decorative eggs with other objects in the museum collection and that of the more well known “Fabergé eggs” to illustrate the taste and cultural policies of the Romanov rulers in late imperial Russia. Her talk will also consider the importance of Easter as the principal religious festival in the Orthodox faith and how this was reflected in art.
Dr Louise Hardiman MA (London) PhD (Cantab) is an art historian, writer, and lecturer specialising in Russian and Ukrainian art and the history of British-Russian cultural relations. Her current research focuses on Imperial Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the history of Russian Art in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Her recent publications include Modernism and the Spiritual in Russian Art: New Perspectives (2017), The Story of Synko-Filipko and other Russian Folk Tales (2019), and Courtly Gifts and Cultural Diplomacy: Art, Material Culture, and British-Russian Relations (2023).
