Volkstedt porcelain

[2] The factory had its origins in an official request made 8 September 1760 by the porcelain maker Georg Heinrich Macheleid (1723 -1801).

Macheleid had long worked in the glass manufactory at Glücksthal and had gained the arcana of porcelain-making by his own researches, apparently independent of Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus and Johann Friedrich Böttger, the ceramists at Meissen.

Volkstedt gained a reputation for its finely painted and carefully modeled porcelain figures that it holds for collectors today.

In 1797 Ernest Constantine, Landgrave of Hesse-Philippsthal, acquired the porcelain manufactory in Volkstedt, which he sold two years later.

During the 19th century the manufactory attracted subsidiary and rival workshops in Rudolstadt: they included Beyer & Bock, Karl Ens, Kämmer & Kramer, Ernst Bohne Söhne, Műller & Hammer.