Museum Centre Vapriikki, in Tampere, opens a new exhibition, entitled ‘Let’s Create a New World’, at the end of May. This displays a wide selection of agitation porcelain from St Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum. The exhibition is open from 27 May to 30 October 2011.

‘Art belongs to the people,' said Lenin. This folk education project also involved the nationalised former Imperial Porcelain Factory, where notable artists were ordered to create brave, new porcelain art. Their work resulted in ‘agitation porcelain’, which proclaimed the ideas and ideals of the revolution and was an important propaganda weapon for the new rulers.

Agitation porcelain was produced by artists such as Kazimir Malevich and Nikolai Suetin in bleak conditions, sometimes in starvation, under the management of Sergey Chekhonin. In 1923–24, they designed their world-famous Suprematist works, including classics of design history, Malevich’s white teapot and the half-cup. Agitation porcelain immediately became...