He returned to Russia where he was employed by the Russian Imperial Printing Office in St. Petersburg for 20 years, acting as technical director.

In 1919, he returned to newly independent Latvia where he was appointed director of the government printing house.

His first works appeared in the early 1890s on the pages of the then-popular Latvian-language magazine, Austrums (The East), when he was still a student at the Stieglitz art school.

He dedicated a great amount of time in the study of folk ornamentation, and under his leadership, the state publishers produced a monumental work on Latvian decorative arts.

During his career, the artist designed many stamps of the Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, Belarusian People’s Republic, and Latvia.