The exhibition of the Vladimir Arseniev Museum of Far East History displays an unusual item — a brick with the stamp “A. D. Startsev”. The brick, decorated with white glaze, was produced at the brickyard of the merchant of the first guild Alexey Dmitrievich Startsev on Putyatin Island and was used by the owner for decorating his house in the Rodnoye estate. The brick was found by М. А. Dyavgo, an employee of the Putyatin fish factory, on the site of a half-destroyed manor house and was handed over to the museum in 1987.

This exhibit is a fragment not so much of Vladivostok’s physical as of its historical and social foundation; a piece of reality, without which the city is unthinkable in the present time. Many buildings in the city center were built of bricks with Alexey Startsev’s stamp.

Alexey Dmitrievich Startsev was an illegitimate son of the Decembrist Nikolay Alexandrovich Bestuzhev, exiled to Siberia. He was born in 1838 in the village of Selenginsk in Buryatia. At first Alyosha was brought up and educated at home under the guidance of his father. After his death in 1855, Alexei began to work as an assistant and then as a clerk for his foster and, at the same time, godfather, merchant Dmitry Dmitrievich Startsev, then for merchant Lushnikov in Kyakhta. From 1861, he was engaged in tea trade in China. He knew well the Buryat, Mongolian, Chinese and several European languages. By the end of the 19th century, Startsev’s capital amounted to millions. He was actively engaged in major construction works in Tianjin, he established telegraph service and a printing house, laid the first demonstration railway line in China.

At the end of the 19th century, Alexey Startsev moved to the Russian Far East. In June 1891, he bought one thousand dessiatins of land on Putyatin Island from the government, taking the rest of the territory on a long-term lease for 99 years. On the leased territory he established a diversified farm, built a brick factory (in 1894) and a porcelain factory (in 1895). Bricks were produced from local raw materials, they had different purposes, sizes, colors and, so, had different types of stamps. Startsev was one of the first to use steam in brickmaking. A steam boiler was installed at the factory, which supplied heat energy to a horizontal steam machine. A steam belt press and a Hoffmann ring kiln were also used.

After Alexey Startsev’s death in 1900 the plant was inherited by his sons — Dmitry and Alexander Startsev.