Dmitry Vinogradov

Vinogradov was born into a low-income household in Suzdal and was trained at the Slavic Greek Latin Academy where he came to know Mikhail Lomonosov.

In 1736, Lomonosov, Vinogradov and a third student from the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Gustav Ulrich Raiser, went abroad to study chemistry, metallurgy, and mining under Christian Wolff in Marburg, Hesse, and Johann Friedrich Henckel (Chemist) in Freiberg, Saxony.

Upon his return to Russia in 1744, Vinogradov was sent to a ceramics manufactory that was established that year under the direction of Christoph Conrad Hunger, who had been induced by Empress Elizabeth to come to St Petersburg from Stockholm.

In 1752, Vinogradov published a treatise advertising his success in producing the first satisfactory samples of porcelain, made of Russian raw materials, employing clay from Gzhel) mixed with finely-ground Olonets quartz and alabaster.

The Imperial factory's greatest period of success was to come under the direction of Prince Alexander Vyazemsky, after Vinogradov's death (in St. Petersburg in 1758).