European porcelain

English version, for German version see below:

The dream of large-scale sculpture in porcelain in Meissen in the 1830s was not only fostered by personalities such as Elector Friedrich August I of Saxony and King of Poland, known as August the Strong (1670–1733), and modelers such as Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706–1775). Gottfried Semper (1803–1879) designed large scale objects made of porcelain around the middle of the 19th century, too. Examples of the materialization of this dream can also be found in the present. A dream, of course, which in the course of its almost 300-year lasting history has proven to be an extremely demanding undertaking and its road to realization, has also been paved with technical difficulties.

Deutsche Version:

Den Traum von der Großplastik in Porzellan hegten in Meißen in den dreißiger Jahren des 18. Jahrhunderts nicht nur Auftraggeber wie Kurfürst Friedrich August I. von Sachsen und König von Polen, genannt August der Starke (1670–1733), und Modelleure wie Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706–1775). Auch Gottfried Semper (1803–1879) versuchte sich gegen die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts an Großobjekten aus Porzellan. Beispiele der Materialisierung dieses Traums finden sich ebenfalls in der Gegenwart. Ein Traum freilich, der sich im Laufe seiner fast 300-jährigen Geschichte als ein äußerst anspruchsvolles Unterfangen erwies und dessen Weg zur Realisierung zudem mit technischen Schwierigkeiten gepflastert war.

The present study analyses the history of the Ginori porcelain manufacture as the result of the entrepreneurial effort of the marquis Carlo Ginori, heir of a noble Florentine family (Paragraph 1). The Ginori family, at the time of Carlo’s birth, had already passed through enrichment, ennoblement to bankruptcy, migration, trade, and back to nobility and aristocratic pursuits in just a couple of centuries. Something of the merchant his father had been persisted in Carlo Ginori, but his political career for the Lorena government of Tuscany moulded his thought toward mercantilist policies. All the while, he managed his family’s possessions with excelling administrative capabilities, an experience he capitalised in the porcelain manufactory.
The peculiarity of the aristocratic entrepreneurship embodied by Carlo Ginori marked the manufactory with some atypical traits that persisted for all the century and a half in which it remained in the hands of the heirs of the Ginori family (Paragraph 2). Accountancy, administration, succession and strategic decisions were heavily influenced by the aristocratic management of the firm. The early centralization of production in the premises located in villa Buondelmonti in Doccia, near Sesto Fiorentino, was just the most visible of these long-term characteristics.
Seen in this light, the history of Carlo Ginori and of his porcelain manufactory provides some precious understanding of the peculiar form and management of enterprises born out of nobility, highlighting a kind of entrepreneurship usually neglected by historiography.

Il saggio ricostruisce le vicende del cosiddetto Tempesto delle Glorie della Toscana ideato dal marchese Carlo Ginori e oggi conservato al Museo dell'Accademia Etrusca di Cortona, a cui lo stesso marchese lo destinò per volontà testamentaria

This paper presents ceramics excavated during the archaeological survey at the Wisłoujście Fortress in seasons 2013–2014. A total number of 7527 ceramics has been analysed and presented in the form of descriptions, statistics, tables, drawings and photographs. The assembly consists of numerous potsherds, candlestick, crucible, marbles, figurines and a bottle stopper. The assembly has been dated to the period between the 15th and 20th centuries. The presented ceramics were produced by local as well as by German, Dutch, Italian, English and Asian craftsmen. The coherent stratighraphical contexts of finding two sub-assemblages dated to the 18th and 19th centuries were examined. These particular artefacts were used by inhabitants of the Fortress during two different
geopolitical contexts. Results of the research prompt for further study in the field of the use of everyday objects by the fortress’ garrison.

The pipe collection discussed here, being under the care of the Department of Mediaeval and Modern Times Archaeology at the Archaeological Museum in Krakow, consists of thirty-seven items, mostly clay bowls of one-piece pipes or stub-stemmed pipes; it also includes a few fragments of clay stems of one-piece pipes as well as unique porcelain bowls and water bags. The collection has been dated broadly to the period between the 17th century and the first half of the 20th century, with the predominance of pipes dated to the 19th century. All the artefacts have been uncovered during archaeological research and supervision in Krakow in 1956–2008.

The collection of the tobacco accessories is dominated by clay stub-stemmed pipes; among those, items without signatures and workshop marks, with multicoloured, mainly yellow or green glazing on their outer surfaces, are especially noteworthy (Photo 1:10-12). They were shaped in two-piece moulds both from ferruginous and kaolinic clays. Some of the pipes had complicated ornaments consisting of geometric or plant-like motifs (Photo 1:9, 14) made with diverse techniques, most often with mould impression. It is likely that the accessories were produced by local potters for the local market. The workshops may have operated near Krakow, as Magdalena Bis argues, quoting potteries in Alwernia and Biecz which also made such items (2009, 239). The workshops could have provided customers in Krakow with various ceramic goods, including tobacco accessories, particularly those for undemanding consumers. This thesis, however, cannot be verified without signatures or other marks helping to identify the products. It is worth stressing that archaeological research in Krakow has not confirmed so far the presence of workshops similar to those in Warsaw or Vilnius, recognisable on the basis of fragments of characteristic ceramic racks used in pipe firing (Zimmermann 1988, 17–18; Meyza 1997, 43, Fig. 7; 2004, 57–58, Abb. 6; Čivilytė, Kvizikevičius, Sarcevičius 2005, 64–65, Abb. 3; Bis 2009, 238).

Most of the pipes, signed items of sound workmanship in particular, came from trade exchange. Burghers of Krakow favoured so-called coffee-house type pipes (Photos 2:7, 9) or signed pipes from numerous Hungarian and Slovakian production plants (Photos 2:5, 8, 10–11). Those accessories, frequent especially in the 19th century, can be treated as evidence of Krakow’s developing trade exchange with large centres producing pipes made of red and kaolinic clays, popular among customers at that time. The great number of such pipes may also have resulted from trade policy of the Austrian authorities, who passed a law abolishing customs autonomy in West Galicia in 1784 and included the region into the overall Austrian system with markedly protectionist tendencies (Kulczykowski 1963, 36). In effect, West Galicia reoriented its trade from the northern to the southern directions, the latter being linked to the countries within the Habsburg Monarchy (Kulczykowski 1963, 36).

Interestingly, the analysed collection contains few one-piece pipes, especially those of Prussian origin (Photo 1:1-7), which suggests that Krakow inhabitants favoured the eastern model of tobacco smoking, related to the Turkish tradition. This problem has been discussed by Katarzyna Meyza, who argues rightly that in the 17th and 18th centuries, Poland was situated at the borderline between West European culture, associated with one-piece pipes, and East European culture, more fond of Turkish stub-stemmed pipes (1997, 33). The impact of the Turkish tradition on the model of tobacco smoking in modern Krakow has also been pointed out by Joanna Dąbal, who notes that Krakow had good trade exchange with south-eastern Europe (2010, 82). Moreover, the scarcity of Prussian one-piece pipes might have resulted from the protectionist customs policy of the Austrian government. Mariusz Kulczykowski writes that the law passed in 1784 was primarily directed against Prussian merchandise imported in considerable amounts by Polish merchants in West Galicia (1963, 36). The few uncovered artefacts of that kind show that the West European model of tobacco smoking was not popular among burghers of Krakow, and pipes of the western type may have been brought to the city by travelling merchants or by soldiers.

The 19th-century assemblage of the tobacco accessories includes porcelain pipes, mainly from Austro-Hungarian manufactures producing china, e.g. in Vienna (Photo 3:1-10). Those artefacts gained popularity especially among soldiers. The Austrian authorities made Krakow a strategic location at that time, positioning many troops in the city. Numerous porcelain pipes uncovered in the barracks and forts built by the Austrians in Krakow confirm that such accessories were trendy among soldiers, which is also evidenced by the finds from the area of St. Benedict Church.

The tobacco accessories uncovered in Krakow reflect its inhabitants’ preferences related mainly to the eastern (Turkish) traditions. They also indicate that tobacco smokers in the city used both local products and high quality accessories from other European centres (Fig. 3). The subject, however, requires further historical and archaeological studies which should cover the Krakow collection as well as analogous finds uncovered in other Polish cities.

Marco Polo introdujo la porcelana china en occidente en el año1295. A finales del siglo XV, el control del comercio con Oriente, pasará a manos de los portugueses que abrirían la ruta hacia el Índico. A partir del siglo XVI se multiplicaron los intentos por conseguir este extraordinario material. Los ejemplares más antiguos conocidos de pasta tierna son los realizados en Florencia hacia 1575, las porcelanas de los Medici. En el siglo XVII nuevas investigaciones en Francia dieron como resultado la obtención de pasta tierna que carecía de caolín. El conde Ehrenfried Walther Von Tschirhausen, en 1704 consigue crear porcelana caolínita. Así se creará la fábrica de Meissen que sirvió como modelo para el resto de las fábricas fundadas en Europa durante el siglo XVIII.
Marco Polo brought Porcelain into Europe in 1295. By the end of the 15 th century Portugal controlled the eastern commerce and opened maritime trading routes in the Indian Ocean. From the 16 th century onwards there was a great interest to obtain this extraordinary material. The oldest pieces of soft paste are the ones made in Florence around 1575, the Medici's Porcelains. In the 17 th century in France, new investigations leaded to the creation of soft paste, a paste that didn't contained kaolin clay. The Count of Ehrenfried, Walther Von Tschirhausen, managed to make kaolin porcelain in 1704. He founded Meissen factory, a model that inspired the rest of the factories created in Europe in the 18 th century.

En el siglo XIX, y más aún en el periodo aquí abordado, la producción de Meissen (o en alemán Meißen) se caracteriza por la reproducción técnica según los modelos históricos del arte y de su propia historia. El elemento artístico original y creativo, apenas juego un papel en el diseño de la porcelana.
A raíz de esto, es un período en Meissen  cuya producción no es considerada de gran valor: “Copias de las figuras del siglo XVIII hechas en el siglo XIX carecen del refinado detallismo de los originales.”  (Spencer 1989: 1)
La pregunta que surge es sobre la motivación de su director a hacer un enfoque retrospectivo y recrear piezas del siglo pasado, con decoraciones también del siglo pasado en pleno siglo XIX. En este breve trabajo se intenta responderlo.

Exposición celebrada en el Palacio de los Virreyes de Barcelona entre el 29 de junio y el 17 de octubre de 2017 en conmemoración del 300 aniversario del nacimiento de Carlos III (1716-1788), Duque de Parma, Rey de las Dos Sicilias y Rey de España y las Indias.

Pink ribbons crisscross around the curved bellies of two porcelain vases, each crowned with a pair of bejeweled white elephant heads. Their curled tusks flank a large potpourri vase in the form of an extravagant ship. This ensemble has held pride of place in the Wrightsman Galleries for the French Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, demonstrating the exceptional craftsmanship of the Sèvres royal porcelain manufactory in executing Rococo flights of fantasy for royal and aristocratic patrons in mid-eighteenth-century France (fig. 1). The garniture exemplified the French court's predilection for Sèvres porcelain, which was exchanged as diplomatic gifts and prominently displayed on the mantels and tables of wealthy European residences. In subsequent centuries, Sèvres royal porcelain

This short article examines "chaney," the historic porcelain shards found in the soil and washed up on the beaches of St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. A hybrid of the words for “china” and “money”, chaney refers to fragments of European ceramics brought to St. Croix by the island’s former colonisers: England, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Cast out as plantation garbage and broken in symbolic acts of destruction, chaney is a symbol of colonial entanglement, intercultural exchange, and resistance. This article considers the distribution, circulation, and archival memory of chaney in the context of Atlantic slavery, especially as it relates to the consumption of European ceramics by enslaved individuals. It also investigates the afterlife of chaney, which is collected by local artisans who repurpose the shards into jewellery. The recuperation of chaney shows how the remnants of prior contact and exchange with foreigners are being reworked by the people of St. Croix to create their own forms of cultural production that offer a symbolic resistance to the hierarchies of European luxury design. This paper concludes by examining the work of St. Croix based artist La Vaughn Belle, whose chaney paintings and porcelain designs for Royal Copenhagen move chaney beyond the limits of its materiality to explore the politics of resistance, identity, and colonial responsibility.
The article is a preview of a longer essay that will appear in the next issue of British Art Studies, the PMC’s online journal. That issue has the special theme ‘Redefining the British Decorative Arts’ and is guest-edited by Iris Moon, an assistant curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It will be published in autumn/winter 2021.

Pour citer : Florent Le Bot, «  Enquête sur le céramiste en ingénieur. L’École de céramique de Sèvres instrument de la reconfiguration de l’industrie, 1870-1940 », Pierre BOISARD, Claude DIDRY, Dima YOUNÈS (dir.), Les travailleurs de l’innovation. De l’entrepreneur aux salariés, PUR, 2016, p. 85-110.

La formation et la recherche dans le domaine de la céramique s’institutionnalisent du fait d’efforts conjoints de l’État, des organisations patronales et des milieux scientifiques. Ces efforts débouchent sur la mise en place d’outils au profit du collectif (écoles et diplômes - dont celui d’ingénieur sévrien, laboratoires et équipements communs) adaptés à des besoins de PME et de districts industriels. Ces communs (services collectifs, structures de formation et autres institutions) sortent les districts industriels de leurs routines , en initiant un processus d’exploration des possibilités offertes par la céramique, notamment dans le domaine électrique. En ce sens, ces outils concourent à l’industrialisation et à la reconfiguration de la branche de la céramique vaisselière et décorative vers la céramique technique.
L’ingénieur sévrien, dans une conformation toute pragmatiste, est en mesure de s’adapter aux nécessités des réorientations de l’industrie céramique. Qui plus est, son profil témoigne d’une évolution profonde de la culture professionnelle de la filière et de ses pratiques, dont il est loin cependant d’être l’unique acteur. Le parcours de professionnels tel qu’Albert Granger, scientifique et praticien, chercheur et enseignant, circulant en France et à l’étranger, entre milieux industriels et de l’enseignement technique, ayant l’oreille des pouvoirs publics et capable, peu ou prou, de prendre la mesure des besoins de l’industrie, est un vecteur essentiel de ce changement de culture. Finalement, la démonstration plaide elle-même pour une dimension pragmatiste de l’approche sociohistorienne, considérant que les fins recherchées par les hommes sont modifiées par les moyens que ceux-ci explorent, développent et mobilisent et, qu’en bonne pratique, l’enquête en sciences sociales doit savoir tenir compte de ce réajustement constant des fins et de leurs moyens, de la construction et reconstruction continue de l’expérience.

Porcelain and Natural History in the Duchess of Portland's Museum Porcelain in eighteenth-century aristocratic collections was associated with both the curious and the foreign. The Duchess of Portland's Museum contained large amounts porcelain along with thousands of natural history specimens. The material and geographic plurality of the collection mirrored its totalizing claims to have a comprehensive display of the world's natural and artificial materials. This essay explores the relationship between porcelain and natural history, arguing that Portland's collection attempted to bridge conceptual distinctions between science and art in the eighteenth century, and that this project was particularly important to making sense of eighteenth-century female collecting practices and their sociable display.

The evolution of early Meissen body, glaze and colorant compositions is examined using X‐ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF) measurements on three artefacts that can be accurately dated to the period 1723–c.1740. The results are interpreted based on recipes recorded in the earliest documents of the Meissen archives.

Presented were a few Easter eggs by the Imperial Porcelain Manufactur St. Petersburg of the 19th century. The art of decoration presents a special direction of Russian decorative and applied art and is one of the brightest faces of the living image of Russia.

Artiste d'origine argentine, vivant à Paris, Ruth Gurvich mène depuis quelques années une recherche formelle dont le matériau de prédilection est le papier, sur lequel elle dessine au crayon, qu'elle peint à l'aquarelle ou à l'acrylique, qu'elle découpe, plie, colle, pour le faire passer du plan au volume et interroger les symboles de la culture universelle et de l'histoire du goût. Depuis 2008, ses créations sont éditées par la manufacture de porcelaine de Nymphenburg (Munich) et par la maison Richard Orfèvre (Paris) depuis 2011. Ses oeuvres en porcelaine ou en argent allient la pureté des formes et des motifs et la préciosité des matières. Ruth Gurvich, inspirée par les oeuvres du musée des Tissus et du musée des Arts décoratifs, propose une collection originale, entre terre et mer. Elle explore aussi, grâce à la manufacture Prelle (Lyon) et à l'atelier d'Offard (Tours) des techniques nouvelles, celles de la soierie lyonnaise et du papier peint. L'exposition est une invitation à la méditation et à la contemplation, dans un univers de raffinement et de perfection où évoluent baigneuses, poissons et grands échassiers.

When Louis XVI was guillotined on January 21, 1793, vast networks of production that had provided splendor and sophistication to the royal court were severed. Although the king’s royal possessions—from drapery and tableware to clocks and furniture suites—were scattered and destroyed, many of the artists who made them found ways to survive. This book explores the fabrication, circulation, and survival of French luxury after the death of the king.
Spanning the final years of the ancien régime from the 1790s to the first two decades of the nineteenth century, this richly illustrated book positions luxury within the turbulent politics of dispersal, disinheritance, and dispossession. Exploring exceptional works created from silver, silk, wood, and porcelain as well as unrealized architectural projects, Iris Moon presents new perspectives on the changing meanings of luxury in the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, a time when artists were forced into hiding, exile, or emigration. Moon draws on her expertise as a curator to revise conventional accounts of the so-called Louis XVI style, arguing that it was only after the revolutionary auctions liquidated the king’s collections that their provenance accrued deeper cultural meanings as objects with both a royal imprimatur and a threatening reactionary potential.

Lively and accessible, this thought-provoking study will be of interest to curators, art historians, scholars, and students of the decorative arts as well as specialists in the French Revolution.

Fruit of passion and labor of a lifetime, the collection of religious images of Carlos Manuel Teles Paião, given to the Municipality of Ílhavo in July 2021, presents itself as one of the most important collections known in this theme in porcelain of the Vista Alegre Factory.
Almost 200 years after its foundation in 1824 by José Ferreira Pinto Basto, the pioneering porcelain factory located in Ílhavo, it took place in the national ceramic’s panorama as one of the Portuguese brands, genuinely, of the world's highest notoriety.
The territory of Ílhavo would be deeply marked by the objects produced there, porcelain saints expertly modeled and painted by the local artists, existing in the houses and private devotional shrines where the prayers of the women were directed to when the news of the men on board the codfish White fleet were late to arrive.
Carlos Manuel Teles Paião was born in Ílhavo on November 10, 1932. His father Francisco da Silva Paião (Almeida) was a captain of the former Portuguese codfish fleet and he is the father of the Portuguese singer Carlos Paião.
Gathered over 55 years, the collection began in 1965 when he leaves cod fishing, in the codfish vessels Creoula and Argus, and joins the pilots of the Port of Lisbon.
The first piece he acquired was a Saint Anthony, a memory of his childhood time in which he accompanied his mother, Berta Teles Paião, to adorn and watch over the altar of St. Anthony of the Church of Ílhavo. 
Then followed the Baby Jesus "mariolas", as they call them "for being layed (abusacados - laizy) on a cushion without doing anything", the Virgins of Conception and other saints, bought in free time in antique shops of the Portuguese capital, auctioneers and collectors, seeking Portugal in search of the rarest pieces.

French Porcelain Society Journal, Vol. VIII, Ceramics as Sculpture
Edited by Diana Davis, Oliver Fairclough, and John Whitehead

Contents
Introduction. Sculpture and Ceramics: points of affinity and difference                              CLAIRE JONES
Sculpture en céramique, et bien plus: ornement et figuration dans les chapelles de Luca della Robbia à Impruneta
FEDERICA CARTA  

Of Wit and Gallantry., On the figures of Johann Joachim Kändler in the Context of the Eighteenth-Century Fête Galante
SARAH-KATHARINE ANDRES-ACEVEDO               

Mimetic Strategies in Meissen Porcelain Sacred Sculpture
SABRINA LEPS            

The Early Sculptural Porcelain of François Barbin at Villeroy and Paris
ERROL MANNERS                        

Porcelain and Sculptural Aesthetics: The Evidence of the Zwettl Table Centrepiece
MATTHEW MARTIN          

Paint it Black: A Wedgwood Bust of Antinous as Bacchus
IRIS MOON

Sculpting the Pittoresque: Clodion’s Erigone
ELIZABETH SAARI BROWNE 

Porcelain and Sculpture Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris
ALICIA CATICHA

Contributions to the Study of Porcelain and Terracotta Sculptures attributed to Giuseppe Gricci and other Sculptors active in the Buen Retiro Factory
MARÍA ÁNGELES GRANADOS ORTEGA 

Les Créations Originales des Sculpteurs à la Manufacture de Sèvres (1848-90)
TAMARA PRÉAUD

Tanagra Mania: Collecting, Displaying and Emulating Greek Tanagra Figures in the Fin de Siècle
ANNE ANDERSON

An Art Director’s Approach: Gio Ponti and Ceramic Sculpture for the Richard-Ginori Factory
OLIVA RUCELLAI