Meissner Porcelain

August the Strong's lavish architectural projects helped Dresden, at that time a rather small town in Germany, rise to political and artistic importance. The city soon became an important hub for central European cultural life, supported by the crown prince's ever so generous patronage of Fine Arts during the era of Baroque. The Prince's great passion for porcelain made the state of Saxony in which Dresden is located at, into an important landmark in European porcelain manufacturing.

The history of Meissner porcelain is legendary. At this time the Chinese and Japanese held the key of producing porcelain in their hands; but August the Strong felt intrigued to get to know this secret recipe in a quest to obtain more of the treasured porcelain that was valued higher than gold at the time. For almost 200 years, Europeans had unsuccessfully tried to decipher the secret components of the Japanese and Chinese porcelain, until Johann Friedrich Böttger a chemist finally managed to reveal the method in an effort to help August the Strong in his obsession with the "white gold."

Meissner porcelain in Europe is a result of August the Strong's passionate spending of large amounts of money to import porcelain artifacts from the orient. His thank you to the talented Böttner (who was only 19 years old at the time) was to imprison him, confining him to a laboratory in the dungeons and urging him to work on refining the recipe. For four years, Böttner struggled to find a formula that would set Saxony apart from other European porcelain manufacturers until he finally succeeded. The first pieces from the factory were created in 1713 according to the well-known East Asian themes, but soon after the production was started, a unique, ornate Baroque style porcelain line was designed which we today know as Meissner or Meissen.

References

http://www.bauerart.com/Meissen.html

http://www.echoworld.com/B04/B0401/B0401Porcelain.htm