Porcelain

Shortly before this time he had been working, in company with Tschirnhaus, in a laboratory constructed for them on the Jungfern-Bastei at Dresden, and it must have been about the time of the death of the latter that the critical experiments were made that led to the production of a white translucent paste. If this be so, it would seem that it was, after all, at Dresden, and not at Meissen, that the first true porcelain was made. It was not till the year 1710 that Böttger was again removed to the old castle of Meissen, where the requisite secrecy could be more effectually preserved.

In any case, in the year 1709 Böttger was able to show some specimens of a true porcelain—somewhat yellowish in tint, indeed—to the royal commissioner, and at the Leipsic Fair in 1710 not only was the red ware offered for sale for the first time, but a few specimens of the white porcelain were on view.

Soon after this we find Böttger established in the Albrechtsburg at Meissen as administrator of the newly established porcelain works. Even now he was little better than a prisoner, and in 1712 he requested the elector-king to allow him to resign. He was consoled, however, by a substantial present, and, so says one account, he was at the same time ennobled—at any rate he was offered the title of Bergrath. But Böttger’s extravagant way of life led to his being constantly in need of money, and in the year 1716 he entertained proposals to sell his great secret to a syndicate of Berlin merchants. In 1719, on the discovery of this treachery, he was again imprisoned. In the same year Böttger died at the age of thirty-four. To the end, it would appear, he held out hopes to his master that he was on the way to success in his gold-making experiments, and his brother-in-law, in a solemn memorial, asserted that he was actually in the possession of the lapis philosophorum. How far Böttger, in making these claims, was playing a double game in order to obtain money from Augustus, it is impossible to say, but we must remember that at the same time Tschirnhaus, a man of culture and high intellectual attainments, was engaged in a search for the ‘universal medicine.’

The red stoneware which was turned out already in 1708—it is now generally known as Böttger ware—resembles closely the boccaro imported at that time from China. Besides the red varieties, of two shades, there is a third kind, in which the surface, as it comes from the kiln, has been left untouched, and such pieces the Germans know as Eisen-porzellan. It is wonderful what a number of forms and applications Böttger was able to give to this stoneware during the short period during which it was produced. Of the red ware some of the carefully modelled pieces were polished on the lapidary’s wheel. A child’s head at South Kensington is a good specimen of this polished stoneware. In the Franks collection, now at Bethnal Green, is a remarkable series of the different varieties of Böttger ware. A tankard of polished marbled paste is marked with the year 1720, showing that the stoneware continued to be manufactured for some time alongside of the true white porcelain. À propos of a beautiful little head of Apollo, we are reminded in the catalogue that in 1711 there were sixty of these Apollo-köpfe in stock. They were priced, unpolished, at nine groschen, or polished at sixteen. The difference, seven groschen, does not seem a high charge for the labour and skill involved in this polishing. In other cases the body is covered with a dark brown glaze, in which a design is traced in incised lines, brought out by gold. This glazed stoneware was afterwards imitated at Berlin and elsewhere in Germany. There are some curious pieces at Dresden, which show that Böttger also attempted, not very successfully, to apply enamelled colours over his dark glazes.

Not till the Easter Fair of 1713 was the white porcelain offered for sale at Leipsic, and even then the specimens on sale were far from faultless. Only in the year 1716—in the interval a new description of white paste had been discovered—was the ware exhibited technically perfect.

Thus in the space of some eight years, Böttger had not only succeeded in making an excellent imitation of the Chinese boccaro ware, of which the special merit was to withstand rapid changes of temperature, but he had once for all solved the great problem: he had produced a hard white porcelain, which has remained since that day the type for the whole of Europe.153

Where, we may ask, did Böttger acquire the technical knowledge and the practical experience, so essential in work of this kind? All the other men who have made a name for themselves as breakers of new ground in the art of the potter—Palissy, Poterat, Wedgwood, and to these we may add the great Chinese superintendents at King-te-chen and the Japanese artists Ninsei and Zengoro—were either working potters themselves or directors of large factories. What opportunities had this youth—he was only sixteen when he came to Dresden, and already, it would seem, ‘well known to the police’—of acquiring the practical details of the kilns, the mixing vats, and the wheel?154

So again with regard to the materials he employed. Not much light has so far been thrown on this point. We have a somewhat childish story about a certain hair-powder—the Schnorrische Erde—which turned up at the psychological moment and solved the question once for all. But porcelain is not to be made from kaolin alone. That is only the skeleton, as the Chinese say. We must find also the right kind of flesh to make the bones hang together. No mention, however, is made in the current narrative of any experiments on felspathic rocks. We know at least that this famous ‘hair-powder’ was a very pure white kaolin, found at Aue, near Schneeberg, in the Erzgebirge, and that china-clay from this source was the principal ingredient in the earliest porcelain produced. So in later accounts we find mention merely of different qualities of kaolin from Aue, from Seilitz, and other sources.155 A few years ago the Meissen paste, it is stated, was composed of kaolin from three different sources 72 per cent., of ‘felspar’ 26 per cent., and of old clay worked up again 2 per cent. In this and in most other cases where felspar is mentioned as a constituent of a porcelain paste, we must probably understand some kind of petuntse or china-stone containing quartz and perhaps other minerals in addition to the felspar. The following figures show the composition of the paste at the beginning of the last century: silica 59 per cent., alumina 36 per cent., and potash 3 per cent. The glaze was at that time composed of calcined quartz 37 per cent., Seilitz kaolin 37 per cent., limestone 17·5 per cent., and porcelain pot-sherds 8·5 per cent. From this it will be seen that the Meissen porcelain is of a somewhat ‘severe’ type. To judge from its composition it must require a high temperature in firing; on the other hand, the paste should possess considerable plastic qualities. The absence of lime from the paste and its presence in considerable quantity in the glaze is a point of interest. In this, the Saxon ware resembles the porcelain that is made in the Owari district of Japan. At Sèvres, on the other hand, we shall see that the glaze of the hard porcelain contains no lime, while that substance is an essential constituent in the paste.

The Meissen porcelain, and indeed the German porcelains generally, form a typically hard and refractory group. But they have in a full measure les défauts de leurs qualités. Among them we may look in vain for that blending of the glaze and body that gives to the best Chinese porcelain a surface like that of polished marble; still less do we find in the enamel decoration the brilliancy and transparence of Oriental wares. In place of this we see a chalky surface of a cold, neutral tone, over which is painted, in dull opaque tints, elaborately executed pictures that look often as if they had been stuck on as an afterthought. Apart from the influence of the taste of the time, and the general absence of the colour sense among the German race, this dulness and opacity is the result of the high temperature required in the muffle-stove to enable the coloured enamels to adhere to the refractory glaze beneath them. As a consequence of this the choice of colours is limited, and even the enamels that are available never become thoroughly incorporated with the glaze.

To return to the porcelain made by Böttger in the few remaining years of his life, it is surprising in what a number of directions we find him making experiments; for indeed all the many varieties of porcelain made during his lifetime may be classed together as experimental. It is only in the museum at Dresden that we can study this interesting period. The moulds that had been used for the red stoneware served at first for the new porcelain. The ornaments in relief were modelled by hand and laid on the surface. Böttger attempted at one time to replace the enamel colours, so difficult to use with effect, by employing a kind of lacquer or mastic as a vehicle. His greatest triumph in this department was the so-called mother-of-pearl glaze, a thin wash of rosy purple with a slight lustre,156 and this he combined with a free use of metallic gold and silver. The plain white of the Chinese was copied closely, but the early attempts at the decoration with blue sous couverte were strikingly unsuccessful. The larger pieces made at this, and even later times, have generally suffered from overfiring or from imperfect support in the kiln, and would now be regarded as ‘wasters.’

After the death of Böttger in 1719 there follows an intermediate period, still in a measure experimental, during which the factory was under the charge of four commissioners. The blue and white of the Chinese was imitated, but not very skilfully. They were more successful with the café au lait glaze, which at that time was in great favour.

PLATE XXXI. MEISSEN, COLOURED ENAMELS

It is to the Viennese painter, Johann Gregorius Herold, or Höroldt (b. 1696; 1720-65 at Meissen), that the credit must be given of establishing a definite school of decoration. He began, however, with the imitation of Oriental designs. At this time the Japanese Kakiyemon ware (both the paste and the pattern) was closely copied. The blue and white with Chinese designs was at length more successful, and now the poudré blue and other monochrome grounds of the Chinese were also imitated. On the other hand, to this time (1730-40) also belong the earliest armorial dinner-services—those with the arms of Saxony and Poland for the electoral court, and more than one set with the arms of the Count Brühl for that pomp-loving nobleman.157

A new direction was given to the manufacture soon after the appointment (in 1731) of Johann Joachim Kändler (1706-1775) to the place of chief modeller. He it was that, abandoning the clumsy imitations of Chinese gods and monsters, first recognised the capabilities of porcelain as a material for those little statuettes and groups of figures that we have since that time come to associate above all else with the European porcelain of the eighteenth century, and especially with that of Germany. The subjects were taken partly from the social life of the day. In part also they carried on the tradition of the ‘Italian comedy’ and of the conventional pastoral life that we find in the French art of a somewhat earlier date. The pictures of Watteau and Lancret were much sought after at that time by the princely collectors in Germany, and a few choice works of these artists, as well as many somewhat muddy copies and imitations of native origin, may be seen in the gallery at Dresden.

The plastic qualities and the infusibility of the paste, together with the thinness of the coat of glaze, enabled the artist to obtain a clearer and sharper reproduction of his model than was ever possible with the soft pastes and the thick lead glazes of the English imitations.158 The best of these little figures, however, belong to rather later times, for during the last years of Augustus the Strong (he died in 1733) Kändler was occupied with more ambitious commissions—life-sized figures of the twelve apostles, an equestrian statue of the king, and figures of animals, to decorate the new rooms of the Japanese palace. But these attempts to employ porcelain as a material for monumental sculpture (in the style of Bernini) ended in failure. There is at South Kensington a series of figures in plain white, dating from this period, apparently destined to form part of a small fountain, and from these a very good idea of this application of the ware can be formed.

It was about this time, or a little earlier, that the passion for porcelain flowers, generally in plain white ware, spread through Europe. These or similar ornaments were even fastened to ladies’ dresses,—witness the gros papillons en porcelaine de Saxe, which we hear of as sewed on to the state-dress of a French marquise. This was the ware that it paid best to manufacture, both here and at Saint-Cloud and Vincennes. Porcelain flowers were applied at a later time to the whole surface of a vase. These ‘Schneeballen vasen,’ as they are called in Germany, were even reproduced at King-te-chen for exportation to Europe.159

With the employment of professional artists—flower-painters, landscape-painters, and painters of genre scenes—to adorn the surface of the already glazed ware with miniature pictures, a style of decoration came in, if decoration it can be called, which became more and more the dominant note of European porcelain during the next hundred years. The flower-painter came first with realistic, well-shaded little nosegays, in the style of the Dutch painters of the day; then landscapes, views of real towns, sometimes in a purple-red monochrome, and surrounded by a gold rococo frame to imitate that of an oil picture. The free use of gold, however, in the European porcelain of this time, was to some extent a saving point. It helped, as gold always does, to pull together the decoration. On the earlier Meissen ware the gold is most solidly applied and has worn well.

The palmy days of the Meissen factory, when seven hundred workmen were employed and large profits made, came to an end with the Seven Years’ War. Frederick, in 1759 and again in 1761, looted the Albrechtsburg and carried away to Berlin the models and moulds as well as many choice pieces of porcelain. The rest of the stock was sold by auction, and the archives of the works were at the same time destroyed.

It was about this time that the most violent of the several porcelain fevers that distinguished the eighteenth century was raging, and the period of the Seven Years’ War may be regarded as the culminating epoch in the history of European porcelain. Both at Sèvres, and with us in England, this is certainly the case. But at Meissen the best had already been produced; the vieille saxe of our ancestors is a product of an earlier period—the thirties, the forties, and the early fifties. During the decade succeeding the close of the war there was little falling off in France and England. At Meissen, however, there now followed a period of decline both artistic and financial. We find a ‘professor of painting,’ one Dietrich, at the head of a ‘school of design,’ and he seems to have been the most prominent man associated with the works at the time. Such an association is a sure sign of the wrong direction now being given to the manufacture. There was some fitful revival later in the century, after the appointment of Count Marcolini to the direction. He was an active minister of the last elector and first king of Saxony—Frederick Augustus the Just—and he held the post of director at Meissen for more than forty years (1774-1815). Marcolini’s name is associated with certain changes of style which in the main reflected the various phases of a taste, or rather fashion, which took its watchword from Paris.

There are indeed two main divisions of this later period: during the first, sentimental motifs and an affectation of domestic simplicity prevailed; the second period was more especially the time when classical models were followed, and it culminated in the Empire style. The first phase is represented in Saxony by the works of the French sculptor Acier; in the later classical time the fashion came in of copying antique sculpture in white biscuit.

The Marcolini period is the last that has any interest for us. It was commercially at least a time of decline. It is said that Josiah Wedgwood, when he visited the factory at Meissen in the year 1790, offered to run it as a speculation of his own, paying a rental of £3000 to the king. The marvel is that the manufacture survived the troubles of the Napoleonic wars when Saxony suffered so much.

During the nineteenth century Meissen has followed more or less in the wake of Sèvres. Huge pieces were produced for presentation, heavily painted with copies of famous pictures in the Dresden Gallery, or adorned with frieze-like bands in monochrome, in imitation of ancient sculpture. During the same time, imitations of the vieille saxe, the marks included, were made with some success, and much cheap ware has been manufactured for the market, so that commercially the Meissen works have for some time had a flourishing career. The change that has come over Sèvres of late, the search after new methods, both in the composition of the paste and in the decoration, has not, I think, been reflected to any extent at Meissen, nor has the scientific side of the potter’s art been illustrated by any works such as those of Brongniart and Salvétat. Indeed the old traditions of secrecy have been maintained in a measure up to the present day. It was only in 1863 that the porcelain factory was removed from the castle rock at Meissen, where it had been carried on for a century and a half, to a more roomy and convenient position in the neighbourhood.

The well-known mark of the two swords (Pl. c. 27) cannot be traced by means of dated specimens further back than the year 1726. This mark had its origin in the privilege claimed by the Saxon electors of carrying the two imperial swords before the Emperor at his coronation. On the earliest pieces we find either the letters A. R. in blue (Pl. c. 26), or else a roughly painted caduceus, or rather rod of Æsculapius (Pl. c. 25), the first on ware for court use, the second on that made for the market. An incised mark cut with the wheel across the two swords is said to indicate the ware that was sold undecorated, generally pieces with some slight defect. We may note that a similar practice was at one time in use at Sèvres. The addition of a star to the swords indicates the Marcolini period. These eighteenth century marks, however, were copied not only in England and by private firms in Germany, but also on the imitation of the vieille saxe made in the last century at the royal works at Meissen, so that their presence on a piece of china is of little value in identifying the date or place of origin.

CHAPTER   XVI

THE HARD-PASTE PORCELAIN OF GERMANY—(continued)

VIENNA—BERLIN—HÖCHST—FÜRSTENBERG—LUDWIGSBURG—NYMPHENBURG—FRANKENTHAL—FULDA—STRASSBURGTHE HARD AND SOFT PASTES OF SWITZERLAND, HUNGARY, HOLLAND, SWEDEN, DENMARK, AND RUSSIA

IN spite of the elaborate precautions that were taken—the oaths of secrecy, the military guards that accompanied the relays of china-clay to the fortress at Meissen in which the works were established—by the middle of the eighteenth century, at nearly all the courts of Germany, imperial, royal, or serene, we find a porcelain manufactory already in full work. It was the fashion of the day, and took its place, like the opera company or the stud, in the equipment of an up-to-date Residenz-Stadt. Only one or two of these princely factories survived the time of turmoil at the end of the century and the Napoleonic invasions. In no single one of the works can we find that any fresh line was struck out or any important improvement made either in technique or in design. The products of these different factories are often to be distinguished only by the marks they bear, and these marks are as often as not forgeries. We shall therefore confine ourselves to a somewhat summary description, pointing out especially the relations of the different centres to one another. The starting of a new manufactory generally depended upon the successful bribing of some official or foreman of works: at the beginning such aid was sought from Meissen, but later on the assistance came from Vienna or from Höchst, so that on this ground the relation of the works to one another might be represented by a rough kind of genealogical tree.

Vienna.—The beginnings of the factory at Vienna were humble. Claude du Paquier, a Dutch adventurer, took out a patent for making porcelain in 1718, and with the aid of an enameller and gilder from Meissen, one Hunger, a man with some knowledge of chemistry, carried on the work on a modest scale, until in 1744 his factory and his secrets were bought by Maria Theresa for 45,000 gulden. The Viennese porcelain was henceforth, until the extinction of the industry in 1864, marked with the Hapsburg shield, generally in blue, under the glaze (Pl. c. 28), with the addition, after 1784, of a contracted year-mark.

So long as the kaolin from Passau was employed the paste was inferior to that of Meissen and Berlin, but in later days a better material was obtained from Bohemia. The most flourishing period was from 1770 to 1790, and in 1780, we are told, there were three hundred and twenty men employed. In early years the porcelain did not differ much from that of Dresden, but in 1784, when Conrad von Sorgenthal became director, a new style was introduced which has made the Viennese in some respects the typical ware of a bad period. Much attention was paid to the gilding and to the pigments employed, and the surface of the porcelain was covered by an elaborate and often gaudy decoration. We are, however, informed by an eminent German authority that ‘from 1785 to 1815 the Viennese porcelain among all the manufactures of the time took, from an artistic point of view, the highest rank’ (Jaennicke, Keramic, Stuttgart, 1879). It is in any case remarkable that, during a period of disastrous war and foreign occupation, so much bad porcelain and good music should have been produced at Vienna. It was at this time that the chemist Leithner obtained, for the first time, an intense black from uranium and perfected the process by which platinum is applied in low relief.

To the same chemist we must also attribute another speciality of the Viennese porcelain of this time,—the decoration with designs in polished gold upon a dead ground of the same metal. There are some elaborately decorated plates at South Kensington which well illustrate the merits or demerits of this ware. In spite of the early foundation of the factory, the Viennese porcelain, as a whole, falls into the later ‘sentimental to classical’ period, that contemporary with Marcolini at Meissen and with the earlier hard paste of Sèvres. The historical development of the ware is well illustrated in the Industrial Museum at Vienna, and it may be acknowledged that some success was obtained with small figures and even life-sized busts. A good deal of cheap and meretricious stuff made in the numerous private kilns in and around Vienna in the latter half of the nineteenth century has lately found its way into the English market.

Berlin.—The porcelain of Berlin is of some interest to us for two reasons, one historical and the other of a technical nature. On the one hand it was thanks to the fostering care of the great Frederick that the factory first assumed any importance, and on the other it was the great attention given in later days to choice of materials (together with the refractory nature of the paste) that led to this pure white ware being employed above all others in the laboratory of the chemist. As at Vienna, the origin of the works was humble, and in this case one perhaps might even say ‘shady,’ if we are to believe the story that it was the workmen who had stolen from the pocket of Ringler, the arcanist of Höchst, the papers containing his recipes and private notes, who were engaged in 1750 by the merchant Wegeli, the first to set up a kiln for porcelain at Berlin.160

The ware that Wegeli made is not important. We find little figures and groups in imitation of Kändler as well as cups and teapots decorated in blue, sous couverte, with little sprigs; his mark, a W., has unfortunately been used at other factories. It was indeed rather the banker Gotzkowski who was the practical founder of the Berlin works, for Wegeli had abandoned his enterprise at the commencement of the Seven Years’ War.