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CHAPTER I

THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE COPENHAGEN FACTORY

THE FOURNIER PERIOD (1760-1766)

Establishment of porcelain factories in Europe—The German School and the French School—Hard paste—Soft paste—The new ceramic art—The great secret—The secret divulged—The first porcelain in Denmark.

In order to understand the initial stages in the history of the manufacture of porcelain in Denmark, it is necessary to review the peculiar conditions in which china factories existed in the eighteenth century. At the middle of the century there were two great schools, the German and the French. The former made hard or true porcelain according to the formula of Meissen, and the latter made soft or artificial porcelain in the manner of St. Cloud.

Hard Paste.—The impulse of the Western potter had always been to reproduce exactly and chemically the Oriental porcelain. Until the first decade of the eighteenth century this had not been achieved. The news of the great discovery by Johann Fredrich Böttger, in 1709, of a white translucent porcelain, having all the characteristics of the Chinese ware, ran like a flame throughout Europe. Translucent porcelain may be either what is termed hard paste (pâte dure), containing only natural elements in the composition of the body and the glaze; or soft paste (pâte tendre), where the body is an artificial combination of various materials used as a substitute for the natural earths. All Chinese or true porcelain is of the hard-paste variety. The term pâte tendre really applies to the feeble resistance of this artificial porcelain to the action of a high temperature as compared with that offered by true porcelain, and also to the softness of the glaze, which can be scratched by steel.

The body of the true porcelain is essentially of two elements—the white clay or kaolin, the infusible element which may be said to be the skeleton, and petuntse, the felspathic stone, which is fusible at a high temperature, which may be termed the flesh, and gives transparency to the porcelain. Of the two Chinese names, which have become classical since they were adopted in the dictionary of the French Academy, kaolin is the name of a locality where the best porcelain earth is mined, and petuntse, literally "white briquettes," refers to the shape in which the finely pulverized porcelain stone is brought to the Chinese potteries, after it has been submitted to the preliminary processes of pounding and decantation.[1]

[1] Chinese Art, vol. ii. p. 16, 1906, by Stephen W. Bushell, C.M.G. (late Physician to H.M. Legation, Peking).

Soft Paste.—The artificial porcelain, which was difficult of fabrication, was an imitation of the true Chinese porcelain, although its whiteness, its translucency, and its brilliant glaze have all the appearance of true porcelain. Kaolin and petuntse are of little importance in the composition of soft porcelain. Its transparency was obtained by the addition of glass, its plasticity by the use of soapstone, and its glaze by an admixture of silica and lead. Moreover, the composition of artificial porcelain has required researches and combinations much more intricate than those which had led to the discovery of hard porcelain, the latter being produced by two substances already provided by nature.

Imitative porcelain had been made at Florence under the auspices of the Grand Duke of Tuscany as early as from 1568 to 1587, of which fabrique only about thirty pieces are known. France is the most prolific in porcelain factories of the pâte tendre, as it came afterwards to be termed in contradistinction to the pâte dure or true porcelain of Meissen. The factory at St. Cloud lasted from 1695 till 1773. Vincennes was founded in 1740, and was finally transferred to Sèvres in 1756, which factory stands paramount in its porcelain, known to collectors as vieux Sèvres.

At Nove, near Venice, in 1752, Pasqual Antonibon brought from Meissen a potter, Sigismond Fischer, to construct a furnace for making porcelain in the Saxon style. In 1761 there were three furnaces, one for hard paste ad uso Sassonia, and two for soft paste ad uso Francia.[2]

[2] Marks and Monograms on Pottery and Porcelain, by William Chaffers. (Letter from Francesco Antonibon to Lady Charlotte Schreiber.)

It will thus be seen that the two schools had begun to run side by side. The crowning point was in 1768, when the Sèvres factory commenced to make hard paste. Both bodies were simultaneously made until 1804, after which the manufacture of soft porcelain at Sèvres was discontinued by M. Brongniart. In 1847, the old style was revived by his successor, M. Edelman (Report on Pottery at the Paris Exhibition by M. Arnoux, 1867).

In general, it may be said that the manufacture of soft porcelain is beset with difficulties and uncertainties. Its artificial composition renders it capricious in the kiln. In connection therefore with the modern manufacture of Sèvres of the old pâte tendre variety, it is interesting to record that in the late eighties the original formulæ of the early potters were used in an attempt to reproduce the old body, but had, after repeated and costly failures, to be abandoned as hopeless.

SUCRIER AND COVER.

Fournier period (1760-1766). Soft-paste porcelain.

DISH AND COVER AND CUSTARD CUP.

Fournier period (1760-1766). Soft-paste porcelain.

(At Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen.)

In regard to England, it is interesting to note in passing that the old porcelains so highly prized by collectors are all artificial with the exception of Plymouth (1768-1771), Bristol (1771-1781), followed by the company of Staffordshire potters at New Hall who bought the Bristol factory patents, although Wedgwood in his jasper ware and Staffordshire salt glazed ware are fine stone wares which approximate to true porcelain.

Our soft-paste factories are here set in chronological order: Bow (1745), Chelsea (1745), Derby (1751), Worcester (1751), Lowestoft (1762), Caughley (1772), Pinxton (1795), Coalport (1798), Minton (1798). It should be observed that these, as do all soft-paste porcelains, differ in body in an enormous degree, whereas the true porcelain differs in a minor degree whether it be Canton or Meissen.

It was only for fifty years that the English potters used the capricious body of the glassy soft porcelains then made. Gradually, by experiment, the standard body for artificial porcelain was perfected by the addition of bone-ash, which has been adopted since the late eighteenth century in varying forms by all English potters. It is more related to true porcelain, and is as safe to manufacture as that body, and at a lower heat, but it retains many of the qualities of the soft body. The painted colours melt into the glaze in its final firing and produce that mellow effect so much esteemed by connoisseurs of old porcelain. It is peculiarly English, and stands unique in having technical assets not possessed by any other porcelain. This is something great to record to the honour of the English potter in his mastery of technique.

The New Ceramic Art.—The eighteenth century, in spite of the wars which shook the kingdoms of Europe to their foundations, showed a singular enthusiasm for the art of the potter. A reference to a table of the factory marks of European porcelain of that period will disclose the fact that most of the leading factories were under the auspices of royal or noble patrons whose arms or monograms were incorporated in the mark of the factory.

Kings, princes, electors, grand dukes, and margraves vied with each other in producing rival ware. The St. Petersburg factory had the cipher of the Emperor Paul. At Weesp, in Holland, Count Gronsveldt-Diepenbroek's factory, the works were handed over to the direction of a Protestant pastor. From Vienna with the mark of the Austrian arms, to La Haye with the design of the stork, the symbol of the city; from the arms of the Archbishop of Mayence and the cross and initials of the Prince Bishop of Fulda, to the design of Lille, the Manufacture Royale de Monseigneur le Dauphin with the crowned dolphin, a bewildering entanglement of royal marks and patrician ciphers is studded on china, to the confusion of collectors, adding zest to the art of the connoisseur.

The Great Secret.—The actual discovery of the composition of true porcelain by Böttger is interwoven with romance, and the betrayal of the secret processes of its manufacture at Meissen to the leading factories of Europe is a record filled with stirring incidents of the most piquant character. The story of young Böttger, the alchemist and inventor, is told in full by Professor Ernst Zimmermann, Keeper of the Royal Porcelain Collection at Dresden, Die Erfindung und Frühzeit des Meissner Porzellans, Berlin, 1908. The search for the philosopher's stone to transmute baser metals into gold had fascinated all chemists. Böttger was credited with more knowledge than he possessed, and he hastily quitted Berlin to avoid the too assiduous attentions of the King of Prussia. For years he wandered in Saxony, and finally claimed protection in 1701 from Frederick Augustus, Elector of Saxony. His life at the laboratory at Meissen, under Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnhaus, who was a distinguished scientific scholar, was that of a guarded prisoner with a wonderful secret. Tschirnhaus, who was a good chemist, established a glass furnace and invented an ingenious burning mirror, and had essayed to make porcelain. But on the assumption that it was a vitrification, his results only led him to the production of a milky glass. A specimen of this milch glass is in the Japanese Palace at Dresden.

When Charles XII of Sweden invaded Saxony, Böttger and his workmen were hurried off to the impregnable fortress of Königstein, where a laboratory was erected. A year later he was back at Meissen conducting experiments and cheerfully exhorting the workmen. In 1709 he produced his true hard porcelain from natural earth obtained from Aue, near Schneeberg.

The most elaborate precautions were taken at Meissen to prevent the secret becoming known. The earth was delivered in sealed casks. It was in vain that an oath was exacted from each workman and written on the walls—"Silence until death" (Geheim bis ins grab). The punishment for betrayal was incarceration as a State prisoner in the fortress of Königsberg for life. The terrible silent conditions of the labour produced a longing on the part of the immured workmen to escape. And escape they did.

The Secret divulged.—In 1718, the year previous to Böttger's death Stolzel, the chief workman at Meissen, made his way to Vienna and proceeded to establish, under the direction of a Belgian named Claude Du Pasquier, a manufactory of hard porcelain. The factory was acquired for the State by the Empress Maria Theresa in 1744.

From Vienna a workman named Ringler carried the secret far and wide. His name is linked with the founding of several factories—at Höchst in 1740, at Frankenthal in 1754, where he became director, at Nymphenberg in 1756, where his aid was invoked, at Ludwigsberg (in Würtemberg) in 1758, and at Zurich in 1759.

The workmen of Höchst, in their turn, further divulged the secret. Bengraf, in 1750, carried the process to Fürstenberg, the factory under the patronage of the Duke of Brunswick.

In 1744 an imperial china factory was established at St. Petersburg by the Empress Elizabeth Petrowna, who employed workmen from Meissen, and in 1765, under the patronage of the Empress Catherine II, the works were enlarged.

There were two methods of obtaining the great secret of Meissen—by stealth and by experiment; most of the factories employed the former means. The attempts to arrive at the hard paste by experiment resulted in the establishment of many soft-paste factories. One remarkable instance of indefatigable industry is that of the chemist Pott, in the employ of the King of Prussia at Berlin, who endeavoured honestly to arrive at the nature of the composition of the Meissen body. He is credited with having made no fewer than thirty thousand experiments, and in so doing he contributed largely to the modern chemical knowledge of the effect of high temperatures on minerals.[3]

[3] Roscoe and Schorlemmer, Treatise on Chemistry, vol. ii. p. 598.

It is thus seen how great was the discovery of Böttger, of Meissen, and how far-reaching were the results of the manufacture of true porcelain in Saxony. A wild burst of enthusiasm followed which has been rarely equalled. Soldier-princes engaged in the wars which were waged in the German States turned aside to indulge in speculation concerning the new art. In 1717 about a hundred and fifty pieces of fine porcelain, many of them old Oriental, now at the Japanese Palace at Dresden, were acquired by Augustus the Strong of Saxony from the King of Prussia in exchange for a regiment of dragoons, without uniforms, horses, or arms.

When the vigilant Frederick the Great commenced the Seven Years' War, and on a sudden filled the electorate of Saxony with sixty thousand Prussian troops, Dresden was taken. It was in vain that the Queen of Poland, daughter of an emperor and mother-in-law of a dauphin, placed the secret State documents in her bedroom to avoid seizure. They were too valuable to Frederick, who had them forcibly removed, and by publishing them proved that he was to be assailed at once by Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, Saxony, and the Germanic body.

The factory of Meissen was depleted of material and models, and he transported artists and workmen to Berlin to found his factory there. Five hundred persons were engaged at this new factory, and in order to win commercial success he executed a master-stroke by framing a decree that all Jews in his kingdom must produce a voucher from the director of the factory that they had purchased a certain amount of the royal porcelain before permission would be granted to enable them to marry.

VASE (ONE OF A PAIR).

Decorated in rococo style with panels having allegorical subjects, one of which has a medallion supported by cupids upon which a crown and F5 are inscribed in gold. Festoons of flowers, painted in natural colours, are suspended from a ring at top of vase; all in high relief. Marked F5 in gold.

(In the collection of Count Moltke, of Bregentved.)

It is such human touches as these, significant in their piquancy, which give exceptional interest to the porcelain of the old days produced in conditions of no little difficulty. Under Court patronage, beset by espionage and hedged about by intrigue, the secret of one factory rapidly found its way across the frontier to the neighbouring State. The fortunes of potters have not lain in smooth places, and fate has been as capricious as the fire of the furnace. In eighteenth-century days the furore of mad dilettantism pursued them relentlessly. Royal amateurs more often than not asked them to make bricks without straw, and there was still in the air the lingering suspicion that the furnace might yield up the secret of the philosopher's stone and fill the State treasury to the full.

The First Porcelain in Denmark.—It is not difficult to imagine the situation. King Frederik V determined to found a porcelain factory of his own. His queen consort was Louise, daughter of George II, who died in 1751, eight years after her marriage. His second wife was Juliane Marie, of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.

Mark.

Fournier period (1760-1766).

Soft-paste Porcelain.

Faience was made at various factories in Denmark, and it is more than conjectural that various native attempts were made to produce porcelain. The royal factory, which the king built near the Blue Tower at Christianshavn, with the aid of foreign workmen whom he had induced to enter his service, commenced to make various experiments. Mehlhorn was one of the alien potters brought from Saxony, but apparently, whether from paucity of natural earths or owing to faulty kilns, nothing of any moment resulted until Louis Fournier, a Frenchman (1760-1766), was induced to take charge of the factory. During what is known as the Fournier period the French director had the assistance of Danish artists, including Johannes Wiedewelt the sculptor. His contemporaries speak of the services he designed. Doubtless many of them were intended as presents to foreign princes and ambassadors, and found their way into royal and foreign cabinets. Although only about twenty pieces of the Fournier period are known, it is not impossible that careful research may discover that some of the early pieces attributed to Fürstenberg may really belong to Fournier of Copenhagen. Obviously, on account of their rarity they are of great value and of exceptional interest as being the first creations of the Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Factory. The identification should be rendered the easier when it is borne in mind that the early Copenhagen porcelain of the Fournier period is soft paste, whereas the Fürstenberg porcelain is hard paste. The mark F with the figure 5 stands for Frederik V and not for Fournier. The coincidence of the initial letter is like the W in Worcester porcelain of the Dr. Wall period.

The early creations of the Copenhagen factory were porcelain, it is true, but they are not the hard or true porcelain of Meissen. They are the soft paste of the same nature as the pâte tendre of contemporary Sèvres. They did not attain the high ideal contemplated by Frederik V when he set out to equal the Saxon porcelain and the other hard-paste porcelains of Germany, but they arrived at a dignity and a grace of style which are worthy of regard. As first attempts they are of surprising beauty, and the few specimens remaining arouse curiosity as to what masterpieces of this short period have been lost to posterity.

The modelling, the design, and the colouring of such early examples as these of a new factory are naturally dependent on prototypes. It was a great thing to produce porcelain at all, consequently the style is found to be derivative. A fine Sèvres jar with cover, in date 1761, at the Sèvres Museum, has a family likeness to the Fournier cups with covers in Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen. Although these latter have the same type of decoration with a white panel on a dark ground, it will be seen that the Sèvres example exhibits the sure mastery of technique of an older factory. The painting is richer and of more detail, with birds of tropical plumage. The Fournier examples, with handles, were evidently designed for use. There are five of these covered custard cups at Rosenborg Castle, three having green and two having blue grounds; we illustrate an example. At the Kunstindustri Museum at Copenhagen there are two custard cups and covers of similar form—one with red decoration; and the other with red and green, and floral decoration painted in colours. These are both marked F5 in blue.

It is interesting to note, in the archives of the Sèvres factory, that Louis XV sent, in 1758, to the King of Denmark a service of green, decorated with figures, flowers, and birds, which cost 30,000 livres. Here, at hand, was a fine Sèvres service as model for Fournier, and the resemblance of soft-paste Copenhagen porcelain to Sèvres is not difficult to understand.

In the illustration of the Oval Dish and Cover standing beside the cup with handle, the ware is coarser and in paste and colouring is not unlike some of the earlier specimens of Bow china. These and the other illustration of Sucrier with Cover and Dish are from the famous collection at Rosenborg Castle. The sucrier and cover are decorated with scale pattern; portions of the outer rim are moulded in relief and the floral decoration is in natural colours.

A Teapot from a tea service at the National Museum at Stockholm exhibits a similar style in this experimental period. The colours of the teapot, cream jug, and cups and saucers are emerald green borders with gilding. The flowers are painted in natural colours. They bear the Fournier mark F5 in gold. The service was a present to King Charles XV of Sweden from the Countess Dannemand.

In the collection of Count Moltke of Bregentved are four fine Vases of this period. They exhibit the rococo style then prevalent and are remarkable works emanating from the little royal factory of Copenhagen during the first years of its existence. On one of these vases is a panel decorated with a group of Cupids supporting a shield upon which is inscribed the mark used by Fournier in the period of Frederik V.

All these soft-paste Copenhagen examples are of great rarity. The Fournier period was of short duration. The death of Frederik V, in 1766, removed its royal patron. The winter of 1766-7 brought great distress in Copenhagen, and the masked balls and masquerades and the luxurious riot of the Court of the young king Christian VII at Christianborg inflamed public opinion against the new monarch.

It is obvious that at such a juncture the royal factory, which in its struggling infancy needed enthusiastic patronage, suffered from neglect so that it is not surprising to find that its days were numbered, and after a vain struggle it finally ceased work. Louis Fournier returned to France, and the first period of Copenhagen porcelain came to an end.