Zwinger: inside

We were going to head to Meissen today to look at the porcelain collection, but after running around for two days, and having two more days of running planned, we decided to just stay in Dresden and look at the collection in the Zwinger.

So now a few (okay a lot) of words on porcelain and the Wettin family's involvement with it...

Once upon a time, Europeans, especially the really rich ones, really loved Chinese dishes and glassware. There was a problem though. China was far away, long distance trade by sea was fraught with dangers (weather, pirates, war, sea monsters), and the Chinese knew they had a hot commodity and really jacked up the prices.

In steps Augustus the Strong (remember him-- built the Zwinger, the Dresden Cathedral, was Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, Duke of Lithuania and et cetera). He really, really liked Chinese dishes and glassware. So much so, that he decided, or so the story goes, he was going to discover the secret of it, and make it himself. Well, not he, himself. He was going to make other people do all of that.

Johann Freidrich Böttger, an alchemist, is credited with the win here, following up on the work of Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus. Again, the story goes Augustus initially tapped Böttger to make gold. Augustus kept him in “protective custody” in the Albrechtsburg until he got the job done. In the course of this, he worked with Tschirnhaus, who had had some success in his research, mainly discovering the secret ingredient of porcelain, but was unable to make a finished product. After Tschirnhaus's death, Böttger took over, and within a week, claimed to have made porcelain.

Augustus was happy. He was happier when the product was refined and he got actual porcelain out of it. In 1709, he established the first European porcelain manufacturing concern: the Royal-Polish and Electoral-Saxon Porcelain Manufactory. It sounds better than Augustus' Dish-works. There's a lot of information available on how things developed, including the origin of the trademark Meissen Blue glaze. I like porcelain, but not enough to go into it. (THANK GOD, everyone out there is saying, I know).

In an act of industrial espionage, the head craftsmen at Meissen sold the secret recipe in 1717, and from there, it spread throughout Europe. To protect its brand, the manufactory at Meissen began marking their products, first with an AR (for Augustus Rex) then various initials for the company, before finally settling on the crossed swords from the arms of Saxony that are still in use today.

I didn't turn over any of the Saxon-produced pieces to check for the trademark, by the way, but I thought about it.

Get ready... here comes the dishes. First, the Chinese and Japanese collectionLeggi altro