There were probably at this time and later many others, arcanistes or practical potters, working at the problem in France. M. Vogt quotes, from the Comptes des Bâtiments du Roi for 1682, two singular payments for the transport of ‘terre de porcelaine’ from Le Havre to Rouen and thence to Paris. This porcelain earth had, it is stated, been previously shipped to Civita Vecchia. It has been suggested that this might refer to a cargo of kaolin sent from the East (La Porcelaine, p. 34).
In 1695 the king granted to the Chicoineau family the privilege of making porcelain, by means of a secret process, reserving only the right previously granted to Poterat of Rouen.
With the establishment, however, of the Saint-Cloud kilns we pass out of the stage of tentative experiment, and the porcelain of Saint-Cloud forms the proper introduction to the soft-paste wares of France.
Early Experiments in England.—The potters art was at a very low ebb in England in the seventeenth century. The Dutch with their Delft ware had taken up a position comparable to that held by our Staffordshire potters a century and a half later. They supplied us for many years with the ordinary crockery in use among the middle classes (indeed, in parts of Ireland such ware is still known as ‘delf’). From the scattered local potteries were produced only the roughest kinds of earthenware. But in this rude ware we see at times a certain barbaric, almost Oriental feeling for colour and decoration, giving more promise of artistic possibilities than we can find in the tame imitative work of the eighteenth century porcelain maker.
Quite early in the seventeenth century, however, certainly by the time of Charles i., pottery works were established by the banks of the Thames at Lambeth and elsewhere, where successful imitations of Delft were made, probably with the assistance of Dutch workmen. Not far off, at Fulham, Dr. John Dwight experimented upon various clays and glazes, in the reign of Charles ii. His is the earliest name that occurs in the history of English ceramics. In the letters-patent granted to him in 1671, he claims that ‘at his own proper costs and charges he hath invented and set up at Fulham … several new manufactories.’ Not only was he prepared to deal with ‘the misterie of the stoneware vulgarly called Cologne ware,’ but he also lays claim to ‘the mysterie of transparent earthenware, commonly knowne by the name of porcelaine or china, and Persian ware.’ This claim is made even more definitely by his friend Dr. Plot, in the History of Oxfordshire, which he published in 1677. Dr. Dwight, he tells us, ‘hath found ways to make an earth white and transparent as porcelane, and not distinguishable from it by the eye or by experiments which have been purposely made to try wherein they disagree.’
We may compare this claim with the similar statements made about the same time in the petitions of Poterat and others. In neither case is there any sign of an acquaintance with the Chinese materials. In France the aim was to make something that should combine the properties of earthenware and glass; while in the case of Dr. Dwight’s ware, hardness and infusibility were the points sought for.
The portrait busts and statuettes in the British Museum, and a famous piece at South Kensington, are all that remain of Dr. Dwight’s wares. These were until lately in the hands of his descendants, and are, therefore, thoroughly authenticated.150 In the former collection are two figures, a sportsman and a girl with two lambs, which in spirit and sharpness of execution compare favourably with our later imitations of Meissen porcelain in soft paste. A thin, apparently non-plumbiferous glaze covers a white body, which is undoubtedly of great hardness and possibly just translucent (‘approaching in some cases to translucency,’ says the writer of the ‘Jermyn Street’ Catalogue). Unfortunately there has survived nothing to illustrate his imitations of Chinese and Persian ware. Dr. Dwight was a man of some social position, and a Master of Arts of Christ Church, Oxford. The very considerable merit of his stoneware figures (and we may add, the pathetic interest attaching to the little figure of a dead child, at South Kensington, inscribed ‘Lydia Dwight, dyed March 3rd, 1673’) have established his position as the father of English ceramics, and on this ground he has found a place along with Duesbury and Wedgwood in the Dictionary of National Biography. For us his stoneware has a special interest. It is perhaps the only ceramic ware in existence that has so many of the characteristics of true porcelain—its hardness, its resistance to high temperatures, and to some extent also its translucency and whiteness of paste—but which in origin and chemical composition differs so entirely from the normal type.
Dr. Place of York was a contemporary of Dwight; he devoted much time to experiments on various kinds of clay. Although he has some claim to rank as an artistic potter, I do not think that there is any proof that he ever made porcelain of either hard or soft paste.
It is certainly remarkable that during the following fifty years and more we hear nothing in England of any attempt to manufacture porcelain, nor is there any patent or contemporary notice bearing on the subject during the interval between Dr. Dwight’s specification of 1684 and the date of Frye’s first patent. A claim to make porcelain by working up the ground fragments of Oriental ware with some gummy materials is perhaps the only exception.
But in England, as elsewhere, the ‘ware of the Indies’ was coming more and more into favour, and its partial victory over foreign and native stoneware and pottery is, as we said above, closely connected with the increasing popularity of tea and coffee. Sack and claret were still served in bottles of Delft ware, and beer in stoneware jugs and tankards. A certain suspicion of effeminacy and degeneracy came to be associated both with tea and coffee, and with the ware in which they were served.151 Even now, any ridicule to which the china-collector is exposed is generally associated with a teapot.
We have in this chapter traced the early attempts made in Italy, as well as those in France and England, to imitate the porcelain of the Far East. We must now turn aside to Saxony, where, at the dawn of the eighteenth century, the problem was solved by the genius of a poor chemist’s assistant. We will then run rapidly through the many centres where hard-paste porcelain was made in Germany, before returning to the soft-paste wares of England and France.
CHAPTER XV
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 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.
PLATE XXXI. MEISSEN, COLOURED ENAMELS
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.