Frankenthal Porcelain Factory

From the start they made hard-paste porcelain, and produced both figurines and dishware of very high quality, somewhat reflecting in style the French origin of the business, especially in their floral painting.

Karl Hannong transferred his business to an empty barracks in Frankenthal, just outside Mannheim, and staffed it with his Strasbourg workforce, under a privilege from the local ruler Elector Carl Theodor of Bavaria, who visited the factory himself in the following year, once production was well under way.

The earlier body was "a fine creamy white with a well-used glaze", but from 1774 the paste was made with local china clay, generally mixed with "Passau earth" (Passauer Erde), resulting in lower quality.

[1] By 1776 the Frankenthal porcelain factory had shops in Aachen, Basel, Frankfurt, Livorno, Mainz, Munich and Nancy.

It was marked by an unusually numerous succession of directors and principal modellers, although some of the main painters spent a long time at the factory; painted mythological scenes were a Frankenthal speciality.