 In
1894 Nicholas II took over the rule of the country. In 1890,
when the St. Petersburg Porcelain Factory came last at the
Paris World Exhibition and the newspapers criticized the lack
of originality, the routine and the lack of principles displayed
by the Petersburg factory, the champion of imitative art,
Count Guryev, was suspended. His place was taken by Baron
Nicholas von Wolf, who was charged with resuscitating, at
any price, the reputation of the imperial factory in the eyes
of Europe.
The new administrator was a doctor of political economics
and statistics, who before his appointment to the porcelain
factory had been working in the office of Empress Alexandra
Fyodorovna, wife of Nicholas II. With this appointment from
within her immediate circle, the empress in effect took the
factory under her wing. In November 1901 she visited the factory
and gave instructions to the artists working there. Thus,
with her direct participation, a table service was designed,
modelled on the shapes of one from Saxony of the previous
century. The service comprised 1500 parts and its purple and
gold decoration consisted of miniatures from drawings by Emil
Kramer, who was in charge of the painting shop. In the search
for new artists Baron von Wolf as a rule chose graduates from
Baron Alexander Stieglitz's Central School for Technical Drawing.
 In
1905 Rudolf Wilde was appointed head of the painting shop.
His drawings had earned the praise of Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna
at the elimination contests she held annually. Apart from
academic painters who were invited to join the factory, others
employed there were Konstantine Krasovski, Edmund Suliman-Grudsinski,
Grigori Simin, Yakov Timofeyev and Ivan Nasarov, all of who
had been through a period of training in European factories.
Mikhail Pestsherov, Alexei Kudryavzev and Alexander Skvortsov,
all excellent picture copyists, had been brought in from private
porcelain factories. Under the direction of Wilde, the factory
trained Grigori Gorkov, Andrei Bolshakov, Alexei Skvortsov
and others to become first-rate porcelain painters. After
Spiess' departure August Thymus was appointed head of the
modelling department.
What helped to rehabilitate the imperial factory was its
technical perfection, which put it in, the vanguard of European
porcelain manufacture, and not its creative activity, even
after it had abandoned eclecticism, while still following
European fashion, which meanwhile had turned to art nouveau.
 The
paste, prepared from excellent, imported raw materials, which
had first rested for at least ten years in the cellars, and
the firing of the ware in new kilns, built after plans by
Yakov Byk and Theodor Poortens, produced porcelain of flawless
quality. Furthermore, after the factory got its own electricity
station, modern, power-driven production machinery was installed
At the same time a casting unit for large vases, of a kind
that until then only existed at Sevres was introduced. And
the recipe, discovered by the well-known chemist Nikolai Katshalov,
enabled soft porcelain to be fired at low temperatures and
thus enlarged the color range of underglaze decoration, surpassing
in this respect the products of Copenhagen and Sevres.
The factory's laboratory was also thoroughly reorganized.
While in the past the approach, based on practical experience,
intuition and the recipes handed down from the old masters
had been empirical, the graduates of Petersburg University
and of the Institute of Technology, who now worked here, approached
matters from a scientific angle. The pieces were now made
from white and colored biscuit porcelain, as well as from
colored and transparently glazed porcelains; the underglaze
decoration had a wide color range and was applied onto a smooth
paste surface that had been turned, engraved or given a relief.
For the enamel decoration enamel and muffle colors were used.
Around 1900 a series of biscuit sculptures by contemporary
artists was produced: "The ship's last sigh" and
"Listening to the breath of the sea", by Amandus
Adamson, "Bust of a female martyr", "Slave
girl", "Fatigue" by Adele Werner and many others.
The artistic style of the time was expressed in the melancholy
stillness of Isaak Levitan's canvases, in the search for purity
of the soul and faith in the pictures of Mikhail Nesterov,
in the uneasy sadness of Anton Chekhov, in the early lyrics
by Alexander Block, in the oppressive melancholia of the verses
by Valeriy Bryusov and Konstantin Balmont... It also found
its commensurate expression in underglaze decoration; in its
anaemic, pale, gray- green-brown half shades, in a technique
producing a sfumato effect, enveloping in a thin veil the
nostalgic and gentle landscapes of the Russian north.
"I have seen... the vases by the painter Simin",
wrote a contemporary critic about the master of underglaze
decoration; "with their pale blue, green, gray and white
colors and their faultless perspectives even without lines
- they almost bewitch one with their atmosphere of the northern
spring. On a large plate there are two deer near some water
-the effect of night has been taken straight from nature."
Art nouveau left its traces in bizarre contours, in painted,
stylized plants and water nymphs, the atmosphere of which
Maximilian Voloshin has so sensitively caught in his verse:
Near to me and comprehensible is this world, so blue-green
tender, World of a vague and trembling shimmer and of gently
curving lines.
Underglaze decoration was mainly reserved for vases and was
always applied to different forms: in 1906 alone, nearly 200
vases of different shapes were created.
 In
1907 the series of figures "The Peoples of Russia"
by Pavel Kamenski was begun, after documents from the ethnographic
collection. The figures were 35 to 40 cm high and vividly
colored, in exact accordance with the cut and the decoration
of national costumes. Two years later a series was made by
the sculptor Rausch von Traubenberg depicting members of guards
regiments of the previous 150 years.
Among the languishing white "giantesses", ethnographic
figurines and statuettes of mounted soldiers, the small, vividly
colored, coquettish figures by Konstantine Somov - "Lady
with mask", "Lovers", "On the stone"
- appear as from another world. Somov was a well-known painter
who belonged to an association active in the early part of
the 20th century, called "Mir iskustva" (World of
Art). This association cultivated an aristocratic aesthetic,
enthusing about the unattainable, splendid world of the theatre;
the noble atmosphere of good old days vanished.
Under the new director, Nikolai Strukov, the influence of
the "World of Art" people on the porcelain factory
increased markedly. Strukov engaged the architect Yevgeni
Lansere, from that circle, to be responsible for artistic
management and he, in turn, brought in the sculptor Vasiliy
Kuznetsov and his assistant Natalia Danko, who had both worked
before with V. Stchuko, Ivan Fomin and other architects of
the Russian empire style.
The figures which the sculptor Seraphim Sudbinin created
of the ballerinas Anna Pavlova and Tamara Karasavina were
without equal in the world, especially the figure of Karasavina
on a single point of support - the dancer's foot. The sculptured
composition "The Rape of Europa" by the painter
Valentin Serov fascinates with its especially refined lines
and capricious chiaro-scuro.
During these years they returned time and again to decorating
porcelain with paintings. Pictures by Watteau, Lancret and
Gainsborough were copied. Kirsanov decorated a huge empire
style vase of more than one and a half meters, with a copy
of Raphael's St. George, which took him more than a year.
The vase was designed for the Palace of Peace at The Hague,
but the irony of fate decreed that the outbreak of the first
World War made delivery impossible.
The war of 1914 - 1917 caused a drastic change in the style
of production. Supplies of technical and chemical porcelain
from Germany stopped, so that the imperial factory now had
to manufacture these, for at the time it was the only enterprise
in Russia with the required material preconditions and suitably
trained staff. Under the direction of Engineer Poorten, the
production of pyroscopes, fireproof pipes, sparking plugs,
etc., was begun within a short space of time and the St. Petersburg
factory was the fourth in the world to produce optical glass
for war equipment. To the three kinds of raw materials used,
a fourth was added, which was necessary for the manufacture
of technical products.
 The
production of decorative porcelain shrank to a minimum, and
the small quantity still being made was sold by the Cabinet
at charity events for the benefit of the imperial military
hospitals. The only bric-a-brac still produced in quantity
was Easter eggs for the "Christosovanye with soldiers
at the front" (kissing it three times while saying: "Christ
has risen. Truly risen").
The factory remained practically untouched by the revolutionary
events of 1905, although it was situated in the Nevski-Gate
part of town, where as early as the end of the previous century
the first Marxist circles had been founded and Vladimir Lenin,
Nadeshda Krupskaya and other social democrats had made propaganda
among the workers.
Compared to others, both blue and white collar workers at
the imperial factory enjoyed a privileged position, despite
strict internal rules and punishments to enforce them. The
working day here lasted 6 hours in winter and 8.5 in summer.
There was a support fund available with a capital of 143,000
rubles for employees with a monthly wage of below 1,500 rubles.
Medicines were issued free, sick people were placed at the
factory's expense in special clinics; also free were heating
and electricity in the factory's own 112 rent-free dwellings
and a waiting list of those requiring accommodation did not
exist; in the canteen unmarried workers had access to a "menu
of ordinary dishes"; the children of workers attended
the village school at the expense of the factory, support
was paid for domestic tuition, etc.
In order to boost production of technical ceramics, at the
beginning of the war, evacuated workers from Riga were taken
on, so that the staff was doubled to number 550. Some of the
new arrivals had connections with the Bolsheviks and began
agitation among the porcelain workers.
The last visit by Tsar Nicholas II in December 1916 appeared
to pass extremely decorously: His Majesty was shown the traditional
New Year presents for the royal household, the next orders
for Easter eggs were taken, but the visit took place without
the usual enthusiasm and ceremony. As everywhere at the Nevski
Gate, as everywhere in the capital, as all over Russia, everyone
waited, some with apprehension, some with hope for future
changes. The year 1917 began.
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