Tea party

Country: Czech Republic

Manufactory: Royal Dux Bohemia

Date of establishment: second half of the XX century

Size (cm): 35*41

Porcelain Story

It was about fifteen years ago. We went with small children for two weeks to Karlovy Vary. To drink healing water, and breathe fresh autumn air. A beautiful city, amazingly well-groomed slopes of wooded mountains, where in the evenings one could often meet live deer (!), long walks along steep and narrow streets - all this was so peaceful that one wanted to enjoy staying there forever.

But, as you know, nothing is eternal in our mortal life. The time has come for us to prepare for the return to Kyiv. Yes, that's the problem that came out. Walking past the windows of fashion boutiques, one day, qite unexpectedly, we came across a porcelain shop. There were a lot of very beautiful dishes and several large porcelain compositions, including ''Tea Party''. This work of an old Czech manufactory was by that time familiar to me from the pictures, and then I got the opportunity to take a closer look at it.

It would seem nothing amazing. An ordinary work with a classic plot, so characteristic of the products of the factory, created in Duchcov in 1853. The works of this manufactory, which at one time quite often changed its name, were highly appreciated at exhibitions in Paris, Berlin and Vienna at the end of the 19th century. And at the beginning of the twentieth century, the manufactory already had representative offices in London, Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid, Stockholm...

My wife looked dreamily at the large table service ''Hunting''. I really wanted to replenish our collection with this ''Tea Party''. And, since we did not have the opportunity to buy and then carry boxes of porcelain with us, I decided to negotiate with the store owners that they would “somehow” deliver all this to Kyiv. The owners were people from the capital of Azerbaijan. They firmly promised ''somehow'' to deliver everything...

Several months have passed since our return home from Karlovy Vary. I was already tired of repeating the phrase to my wife, in which for some reason I continued to believe: ''Since they promised, then they will not deceive ...'' And one evening an unknown man called us and somehow very casually asked: ''Are you waiting for porcelain from the Czech Republic?'' We were still waiting...

The most unexpected thing was that, having opened the boxes and found both the table service and this composition safe and sound, we found a short note there: ''We are sending a little more plates - just in case they suddenly break...'' Well, after that, how can you not trust people who made a firm promise?