The Magic of Meissen Porcelain
By Morris Dye
When August the Strong, a German nobleman who ruled Saxony and Poland in the early 1700s, became obsessed with elegant ceramics imported from Asia, it was one of the most costly habits a connoisseur could acquire. The Chinese had been producing this remarkably light and durable material for 1,000 years, yet for European craftsmen, the secret of making true porcelain remained as elusive as the prospect of turning ordinary metal into gold.
"These Asian porcelains were clamored after by collectors across Europe, and they were extremely expensive and hard to come by," says Jeanette M. Toohey, chief curator of the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Jacksonville, Fla., which houses an extensive collection of 18th-century porcelain.
Then in 1708, Toohey explains, a young chemist named Johann Friedrich Bvttger, toiling under August the Strong's strict patronage, cracked the code and developed Europe's first indigenous porcelain. The workshop Bvttger established at Meissen in what is now eastern Germany spawned a revolution in European decorative arts, and by the mid-1700s, Meissen porcelain adorned royal palaces and aristocratic estates across the continent.
Almost 300 years later, the company now known as Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen continues to craft some of the world's most prestigious ceramic tableware and figurines, including many of the original 18th-century designs created for kings and courtiers when the Baroque and Rococo styles were at their opulent height.
"We cater to a group of people who know the finest things in life," says Peter Jungkunst, president of Meissen's U.S. marketing arm. "It's not a taste that's acquired just because you're rich and have a lot of money. It's something that you have studied, and you love porcelain and the possibility that this medium offers. We are trying to preserve that tradition rather than just make it fast and cheap and furious."
Jungkunst says the company maintains an extensive archive of molds dating to the origins of European porcelain, making it possible to produce replicas of any piece the factory ever made. Jungkunst adds that while Bvttger's original formula of quartz, feldspar and kaolin clay remains largely unchanged, Meissen porcelain has benefited from various technical advances that make manufacturing easier.
"Today's firing techniques are much better than they used to be 300 years ago," he says. "With electric computer control, the heat in the kiln is uniform from top to bottom for every piece."
Meissen is also known for its unusually rich palette of about 10,000 distinct color compounds derived from refined metal oxides, which are mixed by hand and applied by a staff of some 600 highly-trained artists.
Among the approximately 150,000 items Meissen has in its repertoire are numerous early designs that reflect the extraordinary diversity of decorative styles that emerged during the first half-century of production. Many of these early pieces, Toohey says, were copies of the Asian objects prized by European collectors, but as European artists and sculptors learned how to work with the new medium, there was an explosion in the variety of distinct styles and forms that came out of the Meissen factory.
Meissen artists also translated European artistic traditions into porcelain, as painted vignettes on two-dimensional surfaces, or as three-dimensional figurines pioneered by sculptor Johann Joachim Kdndler, who joined the workshop in 1731.
Jungkunst says this spirit of artistic innovation remains strong at Meissen as new designs are introduced and older styles are modified in keeping with evolving trends.
Despite streamlined manufacturing techniques that have made some porcelain more affordable, prices for Meissen products reflect the strict quality control and traditional artisanship that are associated with the brand. Small painted figurines begin at around $1,000 each, and five-piece dinnerware settings range from about $450 to $4,500, depending on the complexity of the pattern.
While prices are high, Jungkunst emphasizes that Meissen does not try to compete with the more affordable mass-produced brands. "We are basically in the art world," he says.
According to Toomey, this marriage of utilitarian and aesthetic concerns is in keeping with the 18th-century roots of Meissen porcelain.
"The categories that we live with today — fine arts, decorative arts, applied arts, and so forth — really emerged in the 19th century," she explains. "The baroque mind and the rococo mind believed that everything you had in your home, in your workplace, in your place of worship, served a function. And what you did was you tried to make everything as beautiful as you could."
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