A Porcelain Military Plate

The Imperial Porcelain Factory first produced a series of plates with military scenes after the end of the Napoleonic wars, and continued to make them until the riegn of Nicholas II. Those produced during the riegn of Nicholas I (1825-1855) are without doubt the finest produced by the factory, and they clearly reflect Russia's military society in which the Tsar and members of the Imperial family were the main figures.

These plates produced during the reign of Nicholas I are taken from the lithographs published in the book Collection of Uniforms of the Imperial Russian Army [Sobranie mundirov rossiiskoi imperatorskoi armii] of 1830, which reproduced drawings by Fedorov, Aleksandrov and Belousov. Later versions of these plates by the Imperial Porcelain Factory did not achieve the same level of quality in the gilt and ciselé borders.