Meissen porcelain

After his death that October, Johann Friedrich Böttger continued von Tschirnhaus's work and brought this type of porcelain to the market, financed by Augustus the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony.

It was a very expensive product by the time it reached European customers, and represented wealth, importance and refined taste in Europe.

[4] At the beginning of the eighteenth century Johann Friedrich Böttger pretended he had solved the dream of the alchemists, to produce gold from worthless materials.

At the same time, Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus, a mathematician and scientist, experimented with the manufacture of glass, trying to make porcelain as well.

When Tschirnhaus suddenly died, the recipe apparently was handed over to Böttger, who within one week announced to the King that he could make porcelain.

Böttger refined the formula and with some Dutch co-workers, experienced in firing and painting tiles, the stage was set for the manufacturing of porcelain.

In 1709, the King established the Royal-Polish and Electoral-Saxon Porcelain Manufactory (Königlich-Polnische und Kurfürstlich-Sächsische Porzellan-Manufaktur),[6] placed Böttger's laboratory at Albrechtsburg castle in Meissen and production started officially in 1710.

Böttger's version was harder than any of these,[7] and retained very crisp definition in its cast or applied ("sprigged") details, on bodies that could be polished to a gloss before firing.

Wares were also sold with plain glazed colors, usually white, to be enamelled in private workshops (Hausmalerei), many in Augsburg and Bayreuth, and independently retailed.

By 1717, however, a competing production was set up at Vienna, as Samuel Stöltzel, head of the craftsmen and arcanist at Meissen, sold the secret recipe, which involved the use of kaolin, also known as china clay.

(Königliche Porzellan-Fabrik) were eventually replaced by the crossed swords logo, based on the arms of the Elector of Saxony as Arch-Marshal of the Holy Roman Empire.

After Irminger, the next chief modeller, Johann Jakob Kirchner, was the first to make large-scale statues and figurines, especially of Baroque saints.

Count Camillo Marcolini ran the factory from 1774 to 1813, when after the Battle of Leipzig he followed Frederick Augustus I of Saxony into exile, dying in Prague the next year.

This period's output was marked by Sèvres styles and ventures into Neoclassicism, such as unglazed matte biscuit porcelain wares that had the effect of white marble.

Some appealing work in the Art Nouveau style was produced, but Meissen's mainstay continued to be the constant production of revived eighteenth-century models.

Johann Joachim Kändler modelled many of the most famous figures, which were initially made for decorating the tables at grand meals, usually in white, replacing sugar sculptures.

However, they soon became very popular as ornaments for living rooms and were cheaper than an entire table service, so available to a rather wider market, both in terms of geography and social class.

As well as the pastoral fantasy shepherdesses there were also some more realistic figures of urban workers, based on print series of the street cries of Paris, London and other cities.

'"ape orchestra"'), are a comic group of figures of monkey musicians, and a larger excited conductor, all in fancy contemporary costumes.

Maria Amalia of Saxony, granddaughter of Augustus, married the King of the Three Sicilies, later Charles III of Spain, and her dowry is said to have included 17 Meissen table services, inspiring the couple to found the Capodimonte porcelain factoruy in Naples.

[21] The most famous of these is the Swan Service (Schwanenservice) made in 1737–1743, for the manufactory's director, Count Heinrich von Brühl;[22][23] It eventually numbered more than a thousand pieces.

[citation needed] The Blue Onion pattern (in fact copying Chinese pomegranates) has been in production for close to three centuries.

VEB Meissen Porzellan turned out to be one of the few profitable companies in the economically troubled East German system, earning much needed foreign currency.

The rarity and expense of Meissen porcelain meant that originally it could be bought only by the upper classes; this gradually changed over the 19th century.

When a wealthy class emerged in the United States in the nineteenth century, such families as the Vanderbilts started their own collections.

[25][26][27] A Meissen porcelain chocolate pot, cover, and stand, dated c. 1780, were amongst the wedding gifts of Queen Elizabeth II.