Meissen Porcelain

Meissen Porcelain is the name of the manufactory where hard-paste porcelain was first produced on a serial basis in Europe. Founded in workshops at Albrechtsburg Castle in the Saxon town of Meissen, the enterprise marked a technical turning point on a continent that had until then depended on porcelain from the Far East.

Its significance for pipe history dates back to its earliest years: shortly after its founding, the manufactory also produced bowls for smoking tobacco, making it one of the earliest links in the German branch of the porcelain pipe tradition.

Porcelain's Riddle Solved in Europe

The composition of hard-paste porcelain remained unsolved in Europe for a long time; the continent made do with expensive imported pieces from China and Japan. Augustus the Strong (Augustus II), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, kept Johann Friedrich Böttger, known for his claims of alchemy, working under supervision. After 1704 Böttger was drawn into the ceramic and glass experiments of the mathematician and natural scientist Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus. Tschirnhaus died in 1708; Böttger, continuing the research, soon arrived at a usable paste composition.

The manufactory was founded in 1709 under the name Royal Polish and Electoral Saxon Porcelain Manufactory, with workshops set up at Albrechtsburg Castle in Meissen, and official production began in 1710. The first product to emerge was not white porcelain: it was a reddish-brown and extraordinarily hard paste known as Böttger stoneware (Böttgersteinzeug). This paste had two practical advantages: it held fine detail from the mold without distortion and could be polished before firing. Silver vessel shapes of the period and Far Eastern ceramics could therefore be imitated with relative ease. White hard-paste porcelain that could be glazed and painted reached the market in 1713; roughly a decade later the overglaze enamel colors developed by Johann Gregorius Höroldt opened the manufactory's classical period. The crossed-swords mark, derived from the Electoral coat of arms, began to be used in the 1720s, became mandatory in 1731, and is still considered one of the oldest trademarks in continuous use today.