I grew up around delicate, handpainted porcelain (Farfor-Фарфор), Russian style, learning just now that love of porcelain infected St. Petersburg during Peter I's time. His daughter, Tsarina Yelizaveta, decreed St. Petersburg's first porcelain factory, Lomonosov, in 1744 "to serve the cause of national industry and art." You might say clay has been in my DNA for generations.
Working with purely white and extremely thin porcelain, the Lomonosov factory offers hundreds of hand-crafted products, ranging from tea cups to porcelain statues of animals. Their website, not the most functional or attractive in design, offers products for sale world wide and is worth exploring. Here are a few of the tea pots. I love the variety of shapes and patterns, they bring memories of my grandmother's house.
All photographs are from the Lomonosov website