By the time the reign of Alexander II (1855-1881) began, the Imperial Porcelain Factory was using entirely imported raw material. The ceramics paints were ordered from Berlin, Paris and London. A steam engine replaced live horse power. The French painters Pierre Boudet (a floral specialist) and Vivant Beauce (the leading producer of "flowers and cupids") continued to work at the factory as did their Russian colleagues Fedor and Konstantin Krasovsky, Alexei Vasilyev and Vasily Kornilov. In 1885 the first-rate copyist Karl Lippold from Dresden began working here.
Sculpture was produced mainly from models by August Spiess, who was the factory’s chief model-maker from 1849. A notable innovation in the early 1870s was the production of terracotta, as well as new methods of decorating porcelain — coloured glazes and painting with a liquid porcelain slip on a cobalt or chrome background (the pâte sur pâte technique).
The years of Emperor Alexander III’s reign (1881-1894) were marked by his particular interest in the activities of the Imperial Porcelain Factory. Convinced that "the propagation of art is a matter of state importance", the Emperor gave orders for the factory to be placed "in the very best conditions, in respect of both technology and art, so that it might worthily bear the title Imperial and serve as an example for all the private manufacturers in this branch of industry." In the 1880s new machinery and tools, brought from Limoges, were installed at the factory together with kilns of a new design from Meissen, Berlin and Sevres. In order to improve production techniques the factory’s craftsmen were sent abroad, to the best porcelain factories and glassworks in Europe. This same period brought Alexander III’s instruction that two original copies of each new item be produced, one of which was then placed in the museum collection.
In 1888 the Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Manufactory presented pieces with underglaze painting at the World Exhibition. This series of vases decorated with landscapes was so effective, that many factories began producing items decorated with paints that were applied to the unfired paste and then covered with glaze. On the recommendation of the director of the Copenhagen factory the underglaze painters Karl Liisberg and Karl Mortensen were brought to St Petersburg. The Imperial Porcelain Factory began working in the underglaze technique in 1892 and by 1906 had produced some 200 vases with underglaze painting.
The largest and most expensive of the factory’s products in the last quarter of the 19th century was the Raphael Service. Its design was developed and approved with the direct involvement of Alexander III. The rich ornament on the service was borrowed from the frescoes in the Raphael Loggias in the Vatican. The execution is a winning combination of fine workmanship, neatly drawn ornament and mastery of miniature painting. The Raphael Service was twenty years in the making and was completed in 1903.
