Porcelain Pride

Porcelain Pride

When Catherine the Great ordered her elaborate dinner service from the renowned Imperial Porcelain Manufacturer, porcelain was the exclusive preserve of aristocrats. But since then it has become almost every Russian's favorite gift.

After the Bolshevik Revolution, Soviet spin doctors skillfully used porcelain as propaganda. Potteries put all those idyllic shepherds out to pasture and switched to turning out figurines of earnest pioneers by the million. They produced china chess sets pitching aristocrats against peasants and fashioned ink pots in the shape of women embroidering the Soviet flag.

The country is hugely proud of its ancient and still thriving porcelain tradition. Inevitable as a wedding present, it also makes a gift fit for many other occasions. At St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary celebrations, President Vladimir Putin presented every head of state who attended with a specially made teacup and saucer.