Summer women's symphony

Country: Spain

Manufactory: Lladro

Date of establishment: 2008

Sculptor: Ernest Massuet

Size (cm): 49*45

Limited Series

Porcelain Story

Despite the relatively small size (almost half a meter by half a meter) of this composition, I attribute it to the masterpieces of the Spanish porcelain manufactory Lladro, which I have loved so long and dearly. Using this work as an example, I will try to show why exactly Spanish porcelain is so dear to my heart.

I am often asked: why is the central place in the collection given to Spanish porcelain? It's hard to answer in one word. Although there is such a word - I love. I love it. It so happened that many years ago my wife Galina and I became interested in Spanish porcelain. It was not immediately preferred. Because by that time they had already got acquainted with unique samples of Italian, English, French, German, Ukrainian, Danish, Japanese, Austrian, Dutch, Chinese and many other most famous manufactories in the world. By the way, many of them are already presented in our collection.

And then we were still in search of our hobby, which eventually became love. And we chose Spanish porcelain at first precisely because it seemed to absorb all the best from the achievements of this type of art. Both past and present.

The masters of the Spanish manufactory Lladro managed, by repeating the best techniques of colleagues from other countries and inventing many of their own unique developments, to achieve, in my opinion, almost absolute perfection in creating their best works. And we managed to collect almost all the most unique Valencian compositions in one collection. Their uniqueness lies not only in the unimaginable size or in the large number of heroes of the plot of the largest products. The finest detailing of the decoration of clothes, the incredibly natural reproduction of colors, the complete illusion of liveliness of flower arrangements, the extraordinary authenticity of every historical detail of clothing, household items, plot compositions - all this and much more made the works of Spanish porcelain, in my opinion, the best in the world.

But, since everything is known in comparison, we decided to collect thousands of porcelain samples from different countries in our collection in order to provide a choice for those who want to compare. I really like the works of the masters of Italy and France, Japan and Ukraine, Great Britain and China, but this is completely different. This is like it. And I am simply fascinated by Spanish creations. And by carefully considering this composition, you can easily understand why.

Our children and I were lucky to get acquainted with the elder of the Lladro family, don Juan, and with members of his family, the families of his two brothers Jose and Vicente, with whom almost 70 years ago he created the first production of future unique products in the suburbs of Valencia. Of course, we have visited the "City of Porcelain" many times, where masters of the highest level develop and then create masterpieces. Such, for example, as the famous ''Queen of the Nile'' presented in our collection, which is 160 centimeters long and 75 centimeters high! It took 5 years of work of the best specialists to create it. A total of 400 hours continued to paint this work alone. And in order to collect manually created 380 fragments of the largest composition, I had to spend 150 hours of work. And in that work, and in this one, there are so many reasons that cause real delight that you begin to understand that all the efforts of the masters, of course, were worth it.