Since the time of its foundation in 1744, the porcelain factory has been engaged in assembling a collection of rare books on art, drawings and engravings that provided the foundation for the creation of the Imperial Porcelain Factory library. This specialist library became an educational resource aiding the work of the factory's sculptors and artists.
The library gradually acquired hundreds of books, albums, engravings, paintings, drawings and photographs. It became a repository for all sorts of figurative material useful to artists: botanical, ornithological and zoological atlases; works on the history of style and ornament, utensils and national costumes; illustrated descriptions of military equipment and uniforms; albums of drawings and prints covering all genres and reproductions of famous paintings. Publications of the finest works of other factories and material on world and Russian exhibitions of industrial design were also passed over to the library.
Today the library occupies one third of the museum complex. Visitors can view engravings by Piranesi, Giuseppe Vasi, Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, John Atkinson, rare sets and atlases with the notes of the artists who used them in their creative work. Of especial interest are the sketches and designs for porcelain produced personally by 19th- and 20th-century artists: from Fiodor Tolstoi, Fiodor Solntsev and Ippolito Monighetti to Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Nikolai Suetin.
Another major attraction of the library collection are the artists' plaster models, drawings and sketches that make it possible to trace the genesis of an item from the first jotted idea to its ultimate embodiment in the material, and also to establish the authorship of many hitherto anonymous creations.
Noteworthy too are the documents reflecting the history of the enterprise: engravings depicting the outside of the Imperial Porcelain Factory, photographs of old museum interiors and the factory workshops, books for honoured visitors signed by monarchs, aristocrats and celebrities and recordings of the voices of the factory's artists.
