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]