LATVIA’S INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE IN A BIOGRAPHICAL PERSPECTIVE: THE LIFE-STORY OF PORCELAIN ARTIST AIJA MŪRNIECE

The research focuses on the possibilities of the oral history approach to the study of the industrial history of Latvia, using the materials obtained during the research of the biography and the creative activity of the artist Aija Mūrniece (b. 1937). Aija Mūrniece is one of the former artists of the Riga Porcelain Factory, who worked there all her life. From 1949 to 1957, Mūrniece and her family were unjustly deported to the Tomsk region, Russia. Upon her return, Aija pursued her dream of studying art. The life story of Aija Mūrniece reveals both the unique and the universal. It reveals not only the fate of an artist working in the porcelain industry, but also Aija Mūrniece’s experience as a person, as a woman, and, from a broader perspective, the biography of the wider Latvian population in the controversial and complex 20th century. The research uses a qualitative methodology, consisting mainly of oral history interviews recorded over several years. The analysis of the material used a biographical approach, which allows the evidence of a person’s life story to be seen in the broader context, and also offers the possibility to use a rich range of personal (diaries, notes, photographs, etc.) as well as visual materials (porcelain objects, decals, drawings, sketches, etc.).