New St. Isaac’s in detail: tiled stove

In these “New St. Isaac’s in detail” features we have already written about Putilov stone and bricks bearing seals, but the historical heritage of our 18th century business centre doesn’t stop there. Following the renovation of the building, a tiled stove was preserved, which is now a feature of one of the business centre’s offices.

New St. Isaac’s in detail: tiled stove New St. Isaac’s in detail: tiled stove

Since time immemorial the stove has been regarded as the centre of the home; a source of heat and comfort. Of course, in Old Rus the most widespread was the Russian Stove. However at the end of the 16th century the tiled stove, adopted from Europe, appeared. Such stoves fulfilled not only a heating, but also a decorative function. The stoves were covered with tiles (ceramic tiles with a special box-like shape). Simply put, the tiles are a type of glazed tile, designed to adorn walls, stoves, or the facades of buildings. The visible surface of the tiles could be either smooth or textured; sometimes they were also glazed. Ornamental/flowered patterns, or anecdotal designs were often depicted on the tiles.

New St. Isaac’s in detail: tiled stove

We decided to talk to author of a book on ceramics, stoves, and fireplaces, and scientific expert at the restoration-building firm Pallada, Andrey Ivanovich Rodenkov. He kindly agreed to answer a few of our questions and to give his impressions of our very own tile stove:

«Such white glazed tiles were in fashion and produced in almost every pottery factory, from around the 1830s until around 1910. Usually they were used in various types of institution: schools; hospitals; and buildings of various societies, as in your case. In fact, recently we restored dozens of similar stoves in the Senate and Synod buildings (where the Presidential Library and the Constitutional Court are located).»

Unfortunately for now we can only speculate as to where and when our tile stove was produced. However it would be interesting to know how much it would have cost the Sarepta Society.

The cost of the tiles necessary for such a stove (not including the cost of building and installing it) has, naturally, changed over time. Let’s say that the cost of such a set of tiles from the Rakkolaniokskiy Factory – which supplied large quantities of tiles in St. Petersburg in 1913 – for a similar stove was 27 Roubles. And, for instance, tiles with the coloured glaze effect and relief elements from that factory cost 250-280 Roubles. You can already feel the difference! At that time, the average yearly wage of an engineer in imperial Russia in 1913 was 800 Roubles.»

New St. Isaac’s in detail: tiled stove

Our building has seen many changes. Today the tiled stove is to be found in one of the offices on the second floor, but previously in the same spot there was a proprietary chapel – indeed the vaulted ceilings hint at this. During the restoration works the stove was relocated to a different place in the building. Specialists painstakingly took it apart, making sure that not a single tile broke. A frame was produced from the veneer, which matched the dimensions of the original stove. The difficulty was in the detail though as there was only a certain number of tiles, each of which had been numbered and was destined for a particular spot, in a particular order. Today the tiled stove looks exactly as it did before it was relocated, although it is now purely decorative.

New St. Isaac’s in detail: tiled stove

Unfortunately, over the course of the years, the hand-making of tiles disappeared as a craft due to the rise of the mass production of cheaper variants, designed for the mass market. Today tiled stoves are only produced to order.