A collection exhibition of “Taisija Poluikevicha. Fragile Strength” on view at the Riga Porcelain Museum

From 9 October to 6 December 2026, the Riga Porcelain Museum will host the exhibition “Taisija Poluikevicha. Fragile Strength”.

The exhibition “Fragile Strength” is a tribute to Taisija Poluikevicha’s personality and many-sided creative work, her contribution to the design development of the Riga Porcelain Factory’s products, and her role in the study of the history of Riga porcelain.

Taisija Poluikevicha (1937–2002) was one of the leading designers of the Riga Porcelain Factory, specialising in form design and creating original authorial forms and paintings. Alongside her work as a designer, she also worked as an art historian and publicist, and headed the Riga Porcelain Factory Museum; together with Zigurds Konstants she wrote the book “Riga Porcelain and Faience” (1984), which remains the most comprehensive and thorough study of the history of porcelain made in Riga.

The exhibition “Fragile Strength” features many once-popular and still recognizable mass-produced sets created by the artist, such as “Marijka”, “Summer”, “Anita”, “Ija”, “Evening”, “Karina”, “Spīdola”, and others, as well as a wide variety of tableware sets, individual items, and souvenirs created from the early 1960s to the late 1980s.

In the designs developed for production, Taisija Poluikevicha was able to combine the functional and the artistic. The forms were simplified and practical, well suited to manufacturing technology and use, yet her individual style was still clearly recognizable. The most visually striking part of the exhibition consists of the artist’s authorial works, in which her creativity is most vividly revealed: in sets, plates, and vases, the plasticity of form is combined with openwork details, lustre, gold and cobalt, as well as virtuoso painting.

Taisija Poluikevicha received her artistic education in the Ceramics Department of Riga Secondary School of Applied Arts, which she graduated from in 1957. Her classmates included the later well-known ceramists Valdis de Būrs, Izabella Krolle, Violeta Jātniece, Skaidrīte Cihovska, Maiga Dimza-Dimme, and Kaiva Elliņa. In 1957, Taisija Poluikevicha began working as a sculptor at the Riga Porcelain and Faience Factory, and in 1960 she was transferred to the factory’s art laboratory, marking the start of an independent creative period.

In 1963, she enrolled in the extramural Department of Art History at the Latvian Academy of Arts (then the State Academy of Arts of the Latvian SSR). Poluikevicha’s diploma work, completed in 1969, laid the foundation for the interpretation of the history of Latvian porcelain and faience. In the 1970s and 1980s, she wrote extensively about the history of Riga porcelain, current production and creative processes, and its artists. In the early 1970s, Poluikevicha became head of the Riga Porcelain Factory Museum. In 1988, she stopped working at the Riga Porcelain Factory because of illness.

Taisija Poluikevicha’s works are held in the Riga Porcelain Museum, the Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation, the Decorative Arts and Design Museum of the Latvian National Museum of Art, the Zuzeum Art Museum, and private collections.