OCR Text |
Show Old Meissen Porcelain Often Called Dresden The middle of the Eighteenth century cen-tury was particularly distinguished by the many attempts which were made to produce and improve porcelain. porce-lain. The opening of trade relations with the Orient through the East India In-dia companies in the last half of the Seventeenth century had brought to the Western World the porcelain of the Orient. At once many prominent promi-nent people on the Continent and in England began trying to produce this "true porcelain." The discovery of hard paste porcelain por-celain had evaded the potters of Europe, Eu-rope, although attempts had been made in Italy with some success near the end of the Sixteenth century cen-tury and in the early Seventeenth century in France and other places. It was not, however, until a chemist, Johann Frederick Bottger, in 1709, discovered by accident the true hard paste which is "white, translucent and ringing." Bottger had been apprenticed to an apothecary and had conducted such mysterious experiments that it was rumored he had found the "philosopher's "phi-losopher's stone." The king of Prussia, Prus-sia, hearing of this, naturally desired de-sired to possess such a wonderful object. The philosopher's stone, according ac-cording to legend, could not only manufacture gold but also contained the elixir of eternal youth. Bottger, fearing the king's interest in the things he claimed to do, fled across the border to Saxony. But here August the Strong virtually imprisoned im-prisoned him and commanded him to produce gold at the forfeit of his life. Bottger did not produce the gold but with the accidental discovery discov-ery of kaolin (china clay) he succeeded suc-ceeded in making for the king true white porcelain. The king recognized recog-nized the value of the new discovery and for greater security had the works removed from Dresden to Meissen in 1710. There with his associates as-sociates he produced the earliest examples ex-amples of the wares that were to astonish the ceramic 'world. |