THE HARD-PASTE PORCELAIN OF GERMANY
BÖTTGER AND THE PORCELAIN OF MEISSEN
We have already more than once come across the famous Elector of Saxony,
who found time, between his Polish wars and his innumerable amours, to
bring together the nucleus, at least, of more than one of the great
collections that have since his time attracted visitors to Dresden. In
the historical collections of the Johanneum and in the Grüne Gewölbe, we
find his name associated with many things of great beauty--arms and
armour, silver plate and jewellery; but still, even after making every
allowance for the strange taste of the time, the general impression of
the man which we get from the objects brought together by him is not
exactly that of a refined amateur. In fact, the German phase of the
school that had its origin in the Rome of Bernini and in the Versailles
of Louis XIV. found in the court of Augustus the Strong its true home.
Nowhere else can we find more characteristic examples of that mixture of
pomposity and childishness, that absence of all feeling for purity of
line, which distinguishes the German ‘rococo,’ than in these collections
and in the buildings that hold them.
Now, it was under the direct patronage of this prince that the
manufacture of porcelain was first established in Europe, and what we
may call the taint of its original home has hung about the ware ever
since. Of the porcelain of Europe as a whole--and this is especially
true of the earlier and more interesting period--we may say that it
belongs to the rococo school, tempered now and again by a more or less
ill-understood imitation of Chinese and Japanese shapes and designs.
Augustus collected works of art of nearly every kind, with the important
exception, indeed, of pictures and sculpture--these branches were at
this time comparatively neglected. But his heart was set, above all,
upon gathering to his new palace in the Neustadt, every fine specimen of
the Oriental porcelain that reached Europe. What more natural than that
he should be seized with the ambition of himself producing in his own
capital something that would rival the wares of China and Japan? No one
had better opportunities--if not himself in direct communication with
the East, his agents were in a position to glean and to bring to him
whatever meagre information about the manufacture of porcelain might
reach Europe. His court was a Catholic centre, and he must have taken
interest in the accounts of the industries of China sent home by the
Jesuit missionaries. The first of the famous letters of the Père
D’Entrecolles on the porcelain of King-te-chen is indeed of just too
late a date for us to think of it in this connection. By that time
(1712) Böttger was already making true porcelain. But what would seem
more probable than that other private letters, with valuable information
about the manufacture in which the Elector took so great an interest,
may have reached him a few years earlier? The Père D’Entrecolles, we
know, had already for several years previous to 1709 (the approximate
date of Böttger’s discovery) been living at Juchou, in the neighbourhood
of King-te-chen.
When we consider the rapidity with which Böttger’s experiments were
brought to a successful issue, and compare this with the long and
fruitless research in other countries, it is impossible to resist a
suspicion of some such infiltration from Chinese sources, and this
suspicion is enhanced by the somewhat suspicious story of Böttger’s
career. But, on the other hand, no confirmation has, so far, been found
for any such theory. On the contrary, I understand that researches made
of late in the State archives of Saxony have rather tended to show that
some injustice has been done to Böttger in the common tradition; that we
must look upon him as a man of considerable scientific attainments for
his age and as a born experimenter, and it must also be remembered that
at that time no great distinction was made between the chemist and the
alchemist.
Johann Friedrich Böttger was born in the year 1685 at Schleiz, in the
Voigtland, where his father had a charge connected with a local mint. He
was early apprenticed to an apothecary at Berlin, and here he was
initiated into the secrets of alchemy by no less a master--so at least
the story goes--than the Greek monk Lascaris, a man who is mentioned
with admiration by Leibnitz, and who is claimed as one of the ‘five
adepts.’ In 1701 Böttger fled from Berlin--it is not quite clear for
what reason--and placed himself under the protection of the Elector of
Saxony. At Dresden and, later on, the rock fortress of the Königstein,
he continued his search for the philosopher’s stone, and about this
time, probably in conjunction with the mathematician and physicist
Walther von Tschirnhaus, began making experiments upon clay--in search,
at first at least, of a refractory material for his crucibles.
Tschirnhaus had already been occupied with improvements in the
manufacture of glass in Saxony, and as early as the year 1699 had made
attempts to imitate Chinese porcelain.[152]
In spite of an unsuccessful attempt at flight we find Böttger, in the
years 1705 to 1707, established in a laboratory in the old castle of
Meissen. Here, after another effort to escape, for which he narrowly
missed being hanged--at any rate so we are told--Böttger, when
experimenting on some red fireclay from the neighbourhood of Okrilla,
fell upon the famous red ware that resembles so closely the Chinese
‘boccaro.’ This was in 1707. The next year Tschirnhaus died, and by
1709, if we are to trust the statement of Steinbrück, the brother-in-law
of Böttger and his immediate successor, the latter had succeeded in
making a true white 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
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXI._ MEISSEN, COLOURED ENAMELS]
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.
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.