BY THE STATE PORCELAIN FACTORY, PETROGRAD, CIRCA 1933

In 1933 Natalia Danko created a series of animated satirical porcelain figures, depicting various types of people living in contemporary Leningrad. Her sister Elena Danko described the series in one of the newspapers that year: ‘Satirical dolls by N. Danko. When touched, they come to life. A nanny rocking a child, […] a bureaucrat nodding his head’. These figures consisted of two or three parts, connected by wires, which would change their character when animated.

For comparable figures depicting a bureaucrat from the Hermitage and Kuskovo Museums, as well as other animated figures, see V. Levshenkov, Tvorchestvo Sester Danko, St Petersburg, 2012, pp. 286-287.