Traaitionally, the paint shop maintained a high level of craftsmanship. Ever since the end of the Nicholas era, French porcelain painters had been employed there: Baudet, master of flower painting; and Bossaitte, first "flower and putto" painter, who, however, was soon surpassed by his pupils Fyodor and Konstantin Krasovski, Alexei Vasilyev and N. Kornilov. With the latter two, Bossaitte made a study trip to Europe. From 1885 on the first-rate copyist Karl Lippold from Saxony also worked in the paint shop.

In 1873 the Imperial Porcelain Factory showed the vase "Dance of the Putti" at the World Exhibition in Vienna. It was awarded the diploma of honour for porcelain painting, a testimonial to the Petersburg factory's position as foremost among European porcelain factories. The decoration of the vase, executed by Alexander Mironov and Vasili Taratchkov, based on designs by Bossaitte, was indeed magnificent. Only the shape of the vase proved a failure. It appeared much more harmonious when it was stood on its head. It had been assembled hurriedly from existing form elements. This curious incident illustrated a decline of artistic standards in the Petersburg factory.

Two years earlier, at the annual New Year's presentation and exhibition at the Winter Palace, Empress Alexandra Fydorovna had expressed her dissatisfaction with the copying of paintings onto porcelain and had also criticized the inelegant shapes. What had impressed her, however, was the sculpture of putti by August Spiess. With rare exceptions, all figures were executed after models by this sculptor. Yet his pieces had a suggestion of imitation, the figures appeared mannered and over-refined. The attempt to treat Russian subjects in the manner of the "second Rococo" proved to be unacceptable.

The loss of a sense of form was reflected in the lack of new creations. As the number of orders from the imperial court shrank, so did the number of forms. What was produced was based largely on old patterns. In response to a reawakening of popular interest in folklore, an attempt was made to produce items of porcelain in the so-called Russian or "farmhouse" style; these, however, were little more than unhappy imitations of metal and wood.

One example of this was a table service with portraits of Russian tsars, which resembled intricate wood carving more than porcelain.

Early in the 1870s the copying of paintings was discontinued, not without the influence of the empress; landscape painting disappeared and decoration concentrated on ornamentation. At the personal behest of the heir to the throne, Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich, work with terracotta was started. Colored glazes were used and pieces were decorated "pate sur pate", i. e. by painting with liquid paste on a cobalt or chromium fond, a technique borrowed from Sevres. Pieces employing this technique were first produced for the wedding of Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna.

Despite the decrease in the production of porcelain (rejects during the firing stage reached 95%) and the paucity of artistic invention, the factory sought new ideas in the hope that things would improve.

On 1 March, 1881 Tsar Alexander was murdered by a terrorist and half a year later the Empress Maria Fyodorovna almost signed the death warrant of the Petersburg porcelain factory when she expressed extreme displeasure at the tastelessness of items presented to the factory's director, State Councillor Dmitri Guryev, for her inspection. This "useless and loss-making" factory ought to be closed, she said. The new tsar, Alexander III (1881 - 1894), however, placed it under the control of the Imperial Academy of Arts.

The president of the Academy of Arts, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, informed the relevant commission that "His Majesty, the tsar, has been pleased to decide that the Imperial Porcelain Factory should be extended the best conditions, both in technical and artistic terms, so as to be worthy of bearing the title Imperial and a model for all private manufacturers in this line of trade." This statement reflected the tsar's attitude to the arts in general; he considered the "spread of the arts as a matter of national importance" and he was particularly concerned that it should be available to the people. The second half of the 19th century saw an extraordinary flowering of Russian culture in painting, music, theatre and literature. It was Alexander III who founded the Russian Museum which, until 1917, bore his name.

Alexander Ill's support and patronage of the arts should have favored further evolution of the porcelain factory towards independence and originality. But its director, Guryev, who had taken over the factory in a lamentable condition, held fast to his principles of imitation.

He had devised a programme, which, in his view, would bring the factory back to health within a short space of time. Three aspects were of central importance: the establishment of a new wage budget with better payment for first class specialists; total independence for the factory's director in the conduct of all business; and prohibition of the porcelain sales into private hands, which emphasized the fact that the factory produced items of "high art and great technical complexity" exclusively for the court. The concept of "high art" was interpreted by Guryev as imitation brought to the state of high art.

According to the new statutes of 1890 the Imperial Porcelain Factory and the Imperial Glass Factory (founded in 1777) were both placed under Guryev's direction; all the workshops of the glass factory were transferred to the porcelain factory, where during the renovation of the buildings, a "crystal tent" was built for the production of glass.

Whereas earlier, in order to modernize production, specialists had been hired from abroad, the factory's own specialists, headed by the administrator himself, were now sent to the best porcelain and glass factories of Prussia, Saxony, Bohemia, France and England. There they were to familiarize themselves with the latest industrial achievements.

During the 1880s Engineer Faure brought new installations and machinery from Limoges to the Petersburg factory. Modern kilns modelled on those in Meissen, Berlin and Sevres were built and other innovations were introduced to bring production up to the level of European manufactures. In 1889 the red glaze "ox blood", familiar in Chinese vases, was developed and earlier experiments to create new decorative processes - coloured glazes and pate-sur-pate techniques - were resumed.

European industry, on the other hand, was not marking time either. The Copenhagen factory exhibited new products with an underglaze technique at the Exhibition of 1888. They were so attractive, that many factories, including Sevres, the trend setter in porcelain fashion, switched to this technique. True to his maxim, Guryev hastened to Denmark. The management of the Copenhagen factory received him amiably, since the Russian tsar was married to a daughter of the Danish king, and took a personal interest in underglaze decoration. On the recommendation of the director, the porcelain painter Carl Lijsberg travelled to St. Petersburg followed by Mortensen, who specialized in underglaze painting. The underglaze technique was introduced at the Petersburg factory in 1892, where, however, local craftsmen had earlier fired cobalt underglazes at high temperatures. In the case of underglaze decoration, the colors are applied onto the unfired paste, which is then glazed at very high temperatures, while muffle colors, which are used in enamel painting, cannot withstand such high temperatures.

Not all metal oxides contained in the high temperature colors remain steady at high temperatures, with the result that the color range of underglaze decoration is limited but the optical effect, even in the case of monochrome glazes, is highly attractive.

Those who continued the traditional technique of enamel painting in the Petersburg factory were Alexander Mironov, Andrei Kirsanov, Fyodor Spiridonov, Wassili and Fyodor Taratshkov and others.

The imitative art of decoration continued, nevertheless, to hold sway: models from Meissen and Sevres, from the Italian renaissance, from Oriental and Egyptian pieces, and more recently especially from Danish porcelain were copied. The tsar's tastes were of course taken into account. He preferred simple, compact vases and particularly liked the works of Chinese craftsmen, whose vases he had copied in his factory. By way of decoration he preferred colored glazes and underglaze painting. Figurative porcelain at that time was not greatly valued and the factory continued to produce pieces modelled on those by August Spiess, such as the biscuit bust of Empress Elizabeth by Fyodor Daladugin and Pavel Shmakov, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the porcelain factory.

Towards the end of the 19th century work began on the production of the great table service "Rafaelefski", which took its name from the ornament of the Raphael frescoes. The final design of this service was elaborated with the active participation of Alexander III. The whole service was finished only in 1903 and was to be the most expensive product of the factory's late period.

On the order of Alexander III all products were made in duplicate, one went to the court; the other remained in the factory museum.