Queen of the Nile

Country: Spain

Manufactory: Lladro

Date of establishment: 2006

Sculptor: Juan Carlos Ferri Herrero

Size (cm): 75*160

Limited Series

Porcelain Story

For more than five years in a row, every day (without a single break!) your humble servant has been tirelessly posting stories on his Facebook page dedicated to one or another porcelain composition from our collection. On trains and planes, early in the morning (very early!) or late in the evening, in a hurry or after carefully studying many historical references, I posted stories in my daily comments designed to cheer up admirers of porcelain beauty.

I don't know if I succeeded or not. I don't know if any of you were fascinated by my opuses or irritated. Don't know. But that is already in the past. And in the current one - acquaintance with the rarest pearl of the world porcelain art. ''Queen of the Nile'', as you already understand, is a work out of the ordinary. Its enormous size is unprecedented. By the way, it was delivered from Spain to Kyiv in a special truck, packed in layers, like a sarcophagus. In this case, this comparison is consonant with the story of the main character of this composition - Nefertari.

One of the five spouses of the ruler of ancient Egypt, Ramses II, the most beautiful and most beloved, she sits on a throne in a huge boat floating on a wide river. She is surrounded by servants, dancers, courtiers. Right in front of her, her two sons are playing. In this work there is not a single accidental touch, not a single smallest detail that would not correspond to the historical realities of that time. Every fragment of the decoration of the thirteen heroes of this story, every detail of the decoration of the boat and even the color scheme was documented by the masters of the Spanish manufactory with absolute authenticity. Without going into details, I want to especially draw your attention to the hairstyles of the queen's sons. Each of them has a long strand of hair on his shaved head, which in Ukraine has long been called a ''settler''! Such, it turns out, was an ancient Egyptian tradition.

My wife and I have traveled extensively in Egypt over the years. And, for example, in Luxor, in the Valley of the Kings, we saw the place where the tomb of Queen Nefertari was discovered. In the richest historical museum in Cairo, we were lucky to get acquainted with her difficult fate. On the Place de la Concorde in Paris, there is an obelisk taken by Napoleon's generals from the Luxor temple, in which the burial of the queen was discovered. And in London museums there is a huge number of artifacts, one way or another connected with her short life.

And for many years this unique work (according to experts, one of the largest porcelain works in the world history) has been with us, constantly causing more and more new sensations of something unprecedented, unknown, mysterious and even mystical. Preparing for this presentation, I again (for the umpteenth time!) saw in this plot so many new details for myself that an involuntary feeling of first acquaintance with the work was created. I am sure that such feelings will overcome everyone, no matter how many times he meets this miracle.