Ivan Petrovich Khlebnikov (1819-1881) came from a merchant family. His father was a member of the merchants’ guild since 1832 and owned a gold and silver workshop. Ivan Khlebnikov expanded his father’s business and founded his own jewelry factory in 1871. The factory worked until 1917, then it was nationalized and redeveloped into the Moscow Platinum Plant.

Ivan Petrovich turned 52 years old when he opened a Moscow factory of gold, silver, and diamond items “in the Yauza part, in the Naryshkin house.” The main building still stands at the corner of Yauzskaya Street and Ryumin Lane, along which former factory buildings stretch.

Already two years after the founding of the factory, Khlebnikov took to the World Exhibition in Vienna a massive cup-brother in the spirit of the times of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and a mug with a relief image of Dmitry Donskoy. “Items that smelled of antiquity” – this is how famous jewelers described them. Historical and literary characters became Ivan Khlebnikov’s favorite subjects. He made precious plates depicting scenes from the life of Ivan the Terrible and a feast from Mikhail Lermontov’s poem “The Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov”.

Ivan Khlebnikov’s products featured a variety of styles: new Russian, neo-baroque, neo-rococo, neoclassicism, modern. The main direction of the works created by the Khlebnikovs was the Russian style, which harmoniously combined with the restrained and plastic modernity. The national ornaments reproduced in enamels looked like the smallest painting with a brush, or a mosaic lined with gems. In this technique, cutlery and writing utensils, cigarette cases, snuff boxes, chests are covered.

The production of the Khlebnikov factory became famous for its Russian-style silver items, decorated not only with niello, but also with bright multi-colored enamels. The masters of the factory fulfilled orders for gift cups and ladles and produced skillful compositions made of silver in the trompe-l’oeil style with an imitation of the texture of fabric, wood, bast, birch bark. The achievements of the factory and the quality of its products have been repeatedly awarded prizes at Russian and international exhibitions. Ivan Petrovich Khlebnikov was awarded the title of court manufacturer. In addition, he became the supplier of the royal courts of Denmark, the Netherlands, Serbia and Montenegro.

The manufacturer’s shops were located in the best trading places: in Serebryany Ryad, on Kuznetsky Most, Ilyinskaya Street in Moscow, on Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg and in Nizhny Novgorod on the main fair line. The company employed about a hundred workers. Sculpture and drawing schools were opened.

Khlebnikov, together with leading Russian jewelers, participated in the decoration of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. He created more than fifty lamps, tabernacles, jugs for holy water. For the Annunciation Cathedral of the Kremlin, an iconostasis gilded with enamel was made at his factory. For the Assumption Cathedral, the partnership was engaged in the implementation of wall icons and icon cases, tombstones for metropolitans and patriarchs, the creation of an iconostasis in the aisle of Dmitry Solunsky from 1898 to 1915.