Swan Service

The distinctive characteristic of the service, from which it gets its name, is its decoration in very low relief: each plate or other piece of flatware has a delicate background with radiating bands based on a scallop shell, against which there is in the central well a pair of swans on the water amid bullrushes, and a crane in the air, descending to join another on the left.

Fabrication of the moulds began in December 1737, and most shapes were completed by 1741;[2] the service was delivered piecemeal as pieces were finished.

Meissen still possesses the moulds, and these were used at the time and later to produce items outside the Brühl service itself, including some in limited editions today.

[13] Except for those pieces of the service that were on museum loan in Dresden, all other pieces of the service were lost during the last stages of World War II, when the approaching Soviet Red Army set ablaze Schloss Pförten, the family castle in today's Brody, Żary County in western Poland.

[14] It is said that the surviving pieces hidden in the castle's cellars[14] were used by Soviet soldiers as targets in a version of clay pigeon shooting.