MADISON, WI.- Russian-born journalist and photographer Ludmilla Nikitina Shapiro, 91, died, reported The New York Times. Together with her husband Henry, she collected Soviet-era political porcelain. The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York acquired the collection in 1989. It took the Shapiros more than six decades to amass this collection. It included more than 250 objects (dinnerware, statuettes and other ceramics emblazoned with words and images intended to convey Soviet glories) from the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 to the 1980’s.

Ludmilla Nikitina was born on June 11, 1913 in Moscow. She studied at the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages and at the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. She married Henry Shapiro (an American journalist born in Romania) in 1933. They worked together for British and American publications.