In 1900 Emperor Nicholas II (1894-1917) appointed a new director of the Imperial Porcelain Factory. Baron Nikolai von Wolf actively set about restoring and perfecting production techniques. The factory acquired new kilns, an electrical power station and equipment for the casting of large vases. The porcelain produced from paste that was made of first-class raw materials and kept in the cellars for at least ten years displayed superb quality.
Wolf stressed the importance of developing new methods for the decoration of the factory’s wares and the range of techniques was broadened through the efforts of the industrial engineers Theodor Poorten, Yevgeny Bellen, Karl Klever and Nikolai Kachalov. Experiments with coloured glazes continued, the most striking being the deep-red “bull’s blood”. Crystalline, semitransparent glazes in shades of grey, pale blue and yellow were also employed. Besides, a technique for painting with coloured enamels appeared, while the soft-paste porcelain developed by Kachalov made it possible to introduce warm tones containing gold into the underglaze painters’ palette. Keen to attract new creative talent to the factory, Baron von Wolf invited graduates of Baron Stieglitz’s College of Industrial Design to join the staff. In 1905 Rudolph Wilde became head of the painting chamber. He trained up under him some first-rate specialists: Grigory Gorkov, Alexei Bolshakov and Alexei Skvortsov. The sculpture section was in the charge of August-Heinrich Timus.
The Art Nouveau left its mark on the factory’s products in the form of fancifully curving lines, painting of stylized plants, seaweed, mermaids and other attributes of the style.
Motifs of the northern Russian countryside found expression in underglaze painting, in its quiet grey-blue half-tones, in the very technique whose subtle transitions produced an effect like Leonardo’s sfumato. One of the finest masters of underglaze painting was the artist Grigory Zimin.
In 1907 the factory embarked on the production of the sculptural series The Peoples of Russia by Pavel Kamensky, based on the material of the ethnographic collection of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. By 1915 the sculptor had created more than 150 models varying in height (35-40 cm) and richness of painting that precisely reproduced the texture and adornments of the different national costumes.
Konstantin Somov, one of the members of the World of Art association, produced for the factory the fairly small, exquisite, brightly painted figurines Lady with a Mask, Lovers and On the Rock. That association with its refined, aristocratic aesthetics that exalted the beautiful world of the theatre played a prominent role in cultural life at the beginning of the 20th century.
In 1911 Nikolai Strukov took over as director of the factory. Under him the artistic section was headed by another World of Art member, Yevgeny Lanceray, and the sculptural section by Vasily Kuznetsov, who later handed over to his assistant, Natalia Danko.
The artist Valentin Serov created a sculptural replica of his painting The Rape of Europa in porcelain. It was produced in biscuit displaying a subtle grasp of the expressiveness of outline and an inner lyrical quality.
In this period reproductions of paintings on porcelain reappeared. The artists copied works by Watteau, Lancret, Gainsborough and others. The painter Nikolai Kirsanov used a copy of Raphael’s St George to decorate an enormous vase, over 150 cm tall, in the Empire style. Work on that one piece lasted about a year. It was intended for an exhibition at the Peace Palace in The Hague that was never held due to the outbreak of the First World War.
The war radically changed the character of the Imperial Porcelain Factory’s production. With no supplies of technical and chemical porcelain from Germany, the factory turned to the manufacture of pyroscopes, fireproof pipes, sparkplugs and optical glass for military instruments. The production of artistic porcelain decreased. Only Easter eggs were produced in great numbers to exchange triple kisses with soldiers.
