Lot 481: iosif chaikov (1888-1979), a soviet faience sculpture "the deep sea diver (epronovets)," konakovo faience factory, 1934-1936

a monumentally proportioned deep sea diver holding a model of a ship in his hands, with stamped factory mark

height 12 in. 30.5 cm

E. A. Bubnova, Konakovskii faians, Moscow, 1978, p. 85.

The term 'Epronovets' comes from the name EPRON, an abbreviation of Ekspeditsiia podvodnykh rabot osobogo naznacheniia (Expedition for Special Purpose Underwater Work). The service, established in 1923 as part of the Special Section of State Security Services, was intended to explore wrecks in Russian waters, salvaging both the valuable metals and, where possible, advanced technology. Their most famous achievement was raising HMS L-55, a British submarine sunk in the Gulf of Finland in 1919, which was salvaged in 1928 and refurbished, becoming part of the Soviet navy in 1931. It ultimately served as the basis for the design of the Soviet L-Class submarines. Iosif Chaikov is best known as a monumental sculptor whose works decorated Moscow's Gorky Park and the Soviet Pavilions at the international expositions in Paris in 1937 and New York in 1939. It is less well known that he played a significant role in revitalizing Soviet artistic faience. Very soon after the 1917 Revolution, Sergei Chekhonin, Natalia Danko, and others created a new Soviet type of porcelain - both figures and tableware. Faience had to wait until 1934, when a group of important artists including Iosif Chaikov, Isidor Frikh-Khar, Vladimir Favorskii, Sarra Lebedeva, and Maria Kholodnaia began work at the newly organized experimental artistic workshop at the Konakovo Faience Factory. (Founded in 1809, the factory had been part of the Kuznetsov ceramics empire; in 1924 it was renamed in honor of Mikhail Kalinin.) The Deep Sea Diver (Epronovets) was among one of Chaikov's most successful designs for Konakovo.