While the efforts to imitate Chinese porcelain first led to lasting results by the invention of soft-paste porcelain in France, the credit belongs to Germany of discovering and introducing into Europe the art of making true hard-paste porcelain of the Chinese type. The discovery was the outcome of researches not originally directed to this end. The romantic story of Johann Friedrich Böttger, the chemist to whom it was due, is well known: how he claimed to possess the secret of making gold, how he fled from Berlin across the Saxon border to avoid the covetous attentions of the King of Prussia, how he was promptly visited with the fate he wished to escape, at the hands of Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and how he spent a great part of a short life in fruitless efforts to make gold by alchemistic means for replenishing the Elector’s coffers. It was only when the needs of Augustus had become the more pressing, in consequence of the exhausting war with Sweden through which he lost the Polish Crown, that his optimistic credulity was in danger of being overtaxed. Böttger foresaw that the Elector could no longer be duped, and the happy idea was suggested to him, probably by the chemist Von Tschirnhausen, of drawing a blind over his failure by another plan for enriching his royal master. The latter was foremost among the sovereigns of Europe as an amateur of the porcelain at that time being imported by Dutch merchants from the Far East; he was therefore likely to view with favour Böttger’s new scheme, which was no other than the restoration of Saxony’s prosperity by the establishment in the country of ceramic industries, and particularly of porcelain factories on the Chinese lines. All Böttger’s efforts were now turned in this direction. In 1708 a “Steinbäckerei” was started at Dresden for the manufacture of tiles, and shortly after Böttger’s celebrated red stoneware was invented. In 1710 he obtained a royal patent for the foundation of a porcelain factory; the site chosen for it was the fortress of Albrechtsburg, near Meissen, and in the course of the year the first samples were submitted to the Elector, two small cups with enamel decoration, still in the royal collection at Dresden. So began the manufacture of hard-paste china in Europe.

The porcelain made at Meissen before Böttger’s death derived its shape in part from contemporary metalwork of the baroque style, and partly from the Elector’s Chinese collection; statuettes were also modelled, after the caricatures of the French etcher Callot. Varied methods of decoration were attempted. Lace-like borders inspired by French designs were executed in enamel colours, or in gold, silver, or lustre; we also find miniature hunting-scenes, such as are seen on Bohemian and Silesian drinking-glasses of the period, applied in gold leaf thickly laid on in slight relief.

After Böttger’s death in 1719 the painter Herold became the leading spirit of the factory, and painting began to play the chief rôle in the decoration of the wares. The earlier French borders gave place for a time to faithful copies of Oriental patterns selected from the royal collection, those of the Japanese Kakiyemon being specially in favour. By 1730 a distinctive Meissen style had arisen, characterised by simple baroque forms and a decoration of panels enclosed with borders of delicate symmetrical scrollwork in gold and colours, often reserved on a monochrome ground; the panels are filled either with groups of pseudo-Chinese figures, or with landscape subjects depicting wide open country with broad rivers, reminiscent of the lowland scenery to the north of Dresden.

The appointment of the sculptor Johann Joachim Kändler, in 1731, to be superintendent of the modellers, led to a revolution in the character of the wares. If painted figure-subjects were introduced, the favourite themes were gallant parties of ladies and gentlemen in the manner of Watteau, but relief ornament and not painting now became the leading feature; the style adopted in the modelling was a modified form of the French rococo, and impressed itself on the productions of most of the German factories which sprang up in rivalry with Meissen. The very spirit of the German rococo is embodied in the countless figures and groups, destined among other purposes to form part of table-services as decorative “Tafelaufsätze,” which were modelled during this period by Kändler and his associates; as we shall see later, they were extensively copied in the earliest English china works. The development of sculpture in porcelain inaugurated at Meissen is a branch of the art in which Europe attained a proficiency absolutely unknown in China; the German factories in particular excelled in their skill in this class of work.

The state of warfare in which Germany was plunged about the middle of the century was a serious check to the progress of the works. When peace was restored in 1763, a new spirit began to manifest itself, contemporaneously with the addition to the staff of the French modeller Acier. The change was completed under the directorship of Count Camillo Marcolini, which lasted from 1774 to 1814. Just as in music, an art in which Germany enjoyed at that time an unquestioned supremacy, the sprightly melodies of Haydn gave place to the graver harmonies of Beethoven, so in porcelain too the altered mood of the age was reflected. Florid rococo forms were abandoned and replaced by the severer contours and simpler decoration of the classic style of Louis XVI. The philosophic sentimentalism of the day was not interested in the pretty but aimless frivolities of the Watteau school, and subjects of an entirely different order were chosen to fill panels and medallions. A service at South Kensington is painted with a series of careful miniatures in illustration of Goethe’s Sorrows of Werther, a work in which the spirit of the age is characteristically expressed. Other favourite themes were Angelica Kauffmann’s renderings of the more sentimental stories of classical mythology.

The Meissen vase chosen for illustration in Plate 20, one of a set of three in the Jones Bequest, dates from the earlier years of Count Marcolini’s management. The slight decoration of dainty and pleasing effect allows the fine qualities of the paste to be fully appreciated. The various ornamental features embody in characteristic manner the ideas of the age. The symmetrical amphora form, the square architectural plinth, the wreaths of oak on the cover and foot, point to the new interest awakened in ancient, more particularly Roman, art by the publication of the antiquities of Herculaneum; the garlands and festoons of forget-me-nots recall the sentiment of an age that amused itself with the study of the “language of flowers.”

The Meissen factory had not long been working before its success suggested the introduction of the manufacture of porcelain in other German states, and in less than fifty years from the date of the royal patent of Augustus the Strong, a porcelain factory was considered a necessary adjunct to the Court of even the minor German rulers. The influence of Meissen is everywhere apparent, but individuality shown in various directions by a few of the rivals entitles them to special mention. The seniority amongst these belongs to Vienna, where a factory was set up as early as 1718 by a Dutchman with the help of workmen who had escaped from Meissen; in 1744 it became an imperial institution. The style of the wares followed closely on that of the parent works, until financial embarrassments led to a complete reorganisation under Baron von Sorgenthal in 1784. The change was heralded by the adoption of severely angular shapes, and of romantic or mythological subjects pictorially rendered, within elaborate borders composed of classical motives carried out in rich highly-burnished gilding on panels of gorgeous colouring; the true qualities of porcelain were forgotten in the effort to arrive at the highest pitch of sumptuous richness.

The factory of Höchst, under the patronage of the Elector of Mainz, famous for its figures of children modelled by Johann Peter Melchior, was also founded with the help of a Meissen artist. Again, it was his marriage with a Saxon princess that awakened in the Elector of Bavaria, Max Josef III., the desire to possess his own porcelain kilns. These were erected at first at Neudeck, near Munich, and were removed in 1758 to Nymphenburg. Thanks to an Italian sculptor, Franz Bastelli, the Bavarian factory takes foremost rank in Germany for its statuettes; whether characters from the Italian comedy, or dancing cavaliers and ladies, they display in their crisp, nervous lines, a spontaneity tempered by masterly restraint which is best appreciated when the white porcelain is left to speak for itself, unobscured by the application of enamel colouring.

The Duke of Württemberg’s factory at the Residenzstadt of Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart, was founded in 1758, a propitious moment for starting a new enterprise of the kind, as Meissen and other factories in northern Germany were suffering from the effects of a long-protracted war. Under the directorship of Ringler, who had previously gained experience at Vienna and Neudeck, the works speedily reached a high pitch of efficiency. In figures they were stamped at an earlier date than other German works with the new ideas of classicism, through the influence of the sculptor who was appointed in 1759 to superintend the modelling, Wilhelm Beyer of Gotha. As the result of prolonged residence in Rome and Naples he was deeply imbued with the spirit of antique sculpture. He understood well how to temper the cold serenity of the antique so as to suit the taste of an emotional age; at the same time he knew how to modify classical forms in compliance with the exigencies of his material, nor did he, like later porcelain-modellers of the classical school, renounce the charms of glaze and colour. The classical feeling makes itself felt as much in his pastoral groups as in his renderings of mythological subjects.

Whilst Beyer was the pioneer of the classical in porcelain figures, the Ludwigsburg factory was slow to abandon the rococo style in its table wares. The exceptionally graceful forms which they assume are typified by the coffee-pot in Mr. Fitzhenry’s collection, represented in Plate 21. The gilt scrollwork under the lip shows the rococo at its best. The mark on the bottom is the cipher of Duke Carl Eugen, a double “C” under a ducal crown.

Excellent work was done in their best periods by several other German factories. Berlin under the patronage of Frederick the Great was successful in combining gracefulness of form with rich painted and gilt decoration, as for instance in the beautiful rococo service with openwork borders made for the Neue Palais at Potsdam. The works of the Elector Palatine at Frankenthal rivalled Meissen in the rich diversity of its figure-modelling, while at Ansbach the factory established by the Margrave Christian in 1758 excelled in landscape work in the manner of Claude, painted en camaïeu in crimson within elaborate gilt borders of feathery rococo scrollwork.

The royal Danish factory at Copenhagen may be mentioned as another instance in which the help of Meissen workmen was secured for setting the enterprise on foot. The manufacture is represented at South Kensington among other pieces by an important vase with a portrait of the Crown Prince, afterwards Frederick VI. of Denmark.