Tea-pot and cover, enamelled and gilt porcelain, made at the Gardner porcelain factory in Russia, ca. 1880-1920, with historic rivetted repairs.

Small tea-pot and cover, with a magenta glaze and reserves to the main body, handle and finial. Reserves on the body are decorated with floral enamelled cameos and gilded, with historic rivetted repairs. The tip of the spout has a metal mount, the cover attached to the handle with string.

Given by Menno Bouma

The Gardner Porcelain Factory was founded in 1766 by the English merchant Frances Gardner, in the village of Verbilki, Moscow. In the 1770s and 1780s the factory produced the four Order Services for Empress Catherine II: Order of St Andrew the First-Called, the Order of St George the Victorious, the Order of St Alexander Nevsky and the Order of St Vladimir. The Gardner factory produced wares of a standard that competed with the Imperial Porcelain Factory, both for the national and international market. In 1892 the factory was bought and absorbed by the Matvei Kuznetsov factory.

The pieces from this tea set were probably originally repaired in Afghanistan, although we cannot be sure the date of the repairs. The collector was stationed as a medic with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Pakistan from 1988 to 1991, where he collected such pieces for their repairs. He documented the traditional process of a 'patragar', an Afghan chinaware repairer. The patragar drilled two small holes in the outside of the broken vessel, using a bow-drill and stone from the Afghan mountains. He would make the rivets by hammering flat copper nails, bending them to size and hammering them into the drilled holes with a small hammer. The object would be made water-proof with a mixture of chalk and egg-white. During this period, rivet repairs became less economically viable, and thus a rarer practice.

C.9:1, 2-2018