| The Elbe river
north of Dresden is the setting for Meissen, Germany. Meissen is more than
1000 years old, founded by King Henry I in 929 AD with the castle "Misni".
Meissen is really a fortress town, and several 13th and 14th century Gothic
cathedrals domintate the skyline of the town, along with the Albrechtsburg
Castle which stands at the original site of the Meissen Porcelain Works.
From the earliest days of the China trade, Chinese porcelain had been highly
valued by Europeans, and the expansion of trade in the 17th and 18th centuries
brought a greater supply and greater exposure for Chinese porcelain in
Europe. Europeans, however, were also trying to perfect the technique of
making their own hard paste porcelain. Italian and French craftsmen had
replicated porcelain only by creating a soft paste porcelain of white clay
and ground glass, not the white kaolin clay used by the Chinese.
Meanwhile, Augustus
II (1670-1733) of Saxony, known as Augustus the Strong, became
a patron of the decorative arts and particularly admired fine
Chinese porcelain. He was an avid collector, but he also funded
the research and development to create a local porcelain industry,
setting up his ceramic works in Meissen. One of his chemists,
Johann Bottger, discovered the proper Chinese formula for hard
paste porcelain in 1708 while having been mandated by Augustus
the Strong, now the King of Poland, to discover a way to produce
gold. In 1710, the necessary ingredient of kaolin clay to make
hard paste porcelain was discovered within his territory and
used at his new factory in Meissen. The local geography of surrounding
mountains could be used to protect the factory and the secrets
of porcelain manufacture, and the Elbe river provided ready
and inexpensive transportation for raw materials and finished
product. The Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen as it was
known began production in a broad array of shapes, colors and
decoration, and in 1719 Augustus brought to the factory top
painters and sculptures to create revolutionary new designs
and colors for the company. Meissen was unchallenged for supremacy
until the mid 1750s by the French royal factory at Sevres,
France. The town of Meissen was renamed in 1776 to be Albrechtsburg
after the castle. In 1861, the factory was moved piece by piece
to a new site in the Triebischtal where it still stands today.
Meissen's trademark of crossed swords, derived from Augustus'
coat of arms, is known the world over as a mark of the finest
quality and a great history. The swords are painted on the porcelain
body after the first firing but before the application of glaze,
using a special color of cobalt blue and was first adopted in
1724.
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