Lot 32A email save

DANKO, Elena Yakovlevna (1898-1942) and Nikolai Fe

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Leningrad: OGIZ, 1934. 200 pp. 8vo (195 x 135 mm). Illustrated by Nikolai Lapshin. Original embossed blue cloth in the original decorated dust jacket. Condition: minor staining to front cover and spine; jacket with some chipping at spine and fold extremities not affecting lettering, rear panel with closed tear repaired on verso. One of 20,000 copies. rare first edition of this famous history of porcelain in the rare dust jacket. The sisters Elena and Natalia Danko (1892-1942) helped revive the art of Russian porcelain at the State Porcelain Factory in Leningrad after the Revolution. Elena described the factory's wares as "news from a radiant future." Natalia modeled the figures and Elena painted them. Among the major works they produced at the Lomonosov State Porcelain Factory in Leningrad were their famous propaganda chess set of the Reds vs the Whites and porcelain figurines of the legendary ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky and poet Anna Akhmatova. Kitaiskii sekret is Elena Danko's best known book. During World War II ("The Great Patriotic War") while fleeing blockaded Leningrad for Irbet in the Urals where the porcelain factory was temporarily moved, both women were killed. A former student of Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin, Nikolai Fodorevich Lapshin (1888-1942) was one of the most important Soviet children's book illustators. He designed for the State Porcelain Factory when the Dankos were also working there. The German-born critic Helmutt Lehmann-Haupt thought Lapshin's illustrations were "informing, witty, and very flexible."

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