For more than two and a half centuries the factory on the banks of the river Neva in St. Petersburg has been at the forefront of high class artistic and utilitarian porcelain. Founded in 1744 by the daughter of Peter the Great as The Imperial Factory, it belonged for a time to the House of Romanov and the porcelain objects produced were only for the select few.

Christoph Conrad Hunger was the first director, who also managed the Vezzi Factory in Venice and gained his experience at Meissen, Vienna. Under his and several successive regimes little was produced besides small articles such as cups and saucers, jugs and snuff boxes for the Tsar and his Court. A commercial sensibility took over in 1763 increasing production, but the factory continued under Imperial control. Two grades of ware were manufactured, one the finest hard paste, the other an off-white variety. Both wares were well glazed. Tableware, vases and splendid figures were produced, both in glazed and in bisque. Decoration evolved from the "Dresden" style -- monochrome landscapes and purple and green flowers with gold or black -- to a later Sevres sensibility with more color and scenes from daily life, landscapes, animals and multi-chrome flowers and birds. The china was marked with the Imperial Russian eagle and with initials and monograms of the rulers, impressed into the porcelain or painted in black or gold. The "Imperial" Factory was also aligned with the Russian Academy of Arts.

Nearly 100 years later, the factory became "IFZ" - Imperatorskii Farforovyi Zavod, - or, The Emperor's Porcelain Factory. From Catherine the Great's reign onwards (1762), factory marks were the same as initials of the reigning monarch. An additional mark - "II K" - stood for "Pridvornaya Kontora", meaning that the piece formed part of the inventory of the Russian royal court.

After the Soviet Revolution in 1917, it was nationalized and once again renamed, this time to the State Porcelain Works, or "GFZ" - Gosudarstvennyi Farforovyi Zavod. On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1925, it was given the name of the academy's founder, Mikhail Lomonosov. Today it is known as, the Lomonosov Porcelain Factory, or "LFZ", and sometimes "The House of Lomonosov" .

Recently the factory has reverted to using "Imperial Porcelain Factory" as its title. While adding to the confusion, it's likely that Lomonosov will be the name of the factory for years to come.

Today, porcelain from Lomonosov can be found in the Hermitage and the Russian Museum, as well as the Palace Museums of Pavlovsk, Petrodvorets and Tsarskoe Selo. In Moscow, pieces can be found in the State Historical Museum and the Ceramics Museum of Kuskovo. The factory even has its own museum, established in 1844, which contains some 20,000 items on exhibits.

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