«Ворота сборки»

A series of three wall plates, «Assembly Gates, ” was created for the documentary show „Assembly Points.“

Moscow is structured in concentric rings, and once, gates stood on those rings, serving as the entryways to the city. In this project, the gates become the location of the hero—a point where one person connects with others, and from these individuals, streets, courtyards, and districts are formed. Each plate features a relief composition of the hero’s location gates, and all of them are constructed from the same elements: sphere, cylinder, and arch.

As is customary in cinema, a plate is smashed on the first day of shooting on set for good luck. This series of plates echoes that gesture, but it is never broken; it is immediately crafted as if it has been assembled, with golden seams connecting the fragments. This is a metaphor for a finished episode, where the hero’s story is already complete. The plate is kept on the wall of the location where it was filmed, and on its back, it bears a dot—the mark of the project.

A souvenir plate is brought back from a trip to remember a city, but this plate tells the story of a person within it.

In the series, there are three plates—one for each character from the «Breakpoints» (Точек сборки). Each plate is dedicated to a place that a person created within the city. The shape is uniform across all of them, but the glaze color and the gates assembled on the face differ.

These plates are part of the project’s merchandise; they are given to the characters after the filming and displayed on the wall of their respective places. You can read more about the characters and the show in the main project description.

The gates rise above the plate’s surface, and the golden seams run between the fragments, converging toward them like streets to an intersection.

The plate is small and decorative, about the size of two palms, roughly 12 cm. It is hung on the wall like a souvenir, but its place is not in the viewer’s home—it is in the hero’s establishment.

Dimensions after firing
· diameter 120 mm
· height with relief up to 20 mm
· wall thickness 4 mm
· ring-base diameter 65 mm

Material: porcelain, cast slip
The surface is coated with a glossy glaze in three colors: red, blue, and yellow
Seams are decorated with overglaze gold

The underside is unglazed, featuring a relief dot with a 10 mm diameter
The series consists of three variations of one shape

The base of the plate is cast in slip into a two-part plaster mold. The seams between the «shards» are cast in relief directly into the mold, so every plate in the series repeats the same design.

The gates are assembled from modules: a sphere, a cylinder, an arch, and a semicircle, each cast in its own small mold. The modules are attached to the base using slip, with each character arranged in their own sequence. Thus, one mold system yields three different designs.

Next, the plate undergoes a bisque firing, glazing, and a glaze firing. Gold is applied to the seams and fixed in a third firing. Temperatures and firing schedules are determined by the master.