Porcelain

by Edward Dillon

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.