Modern ceramics and a primeval motif.
| China |
It has been nearly 7.000 years since people started to grow grain, peas and beans. Simultaneously they were searching for some way, how to store this food. And at that time they commenced to make ceramic vessels.
Such production was very primitive. The most important thing was to find good clay, which was sticky enough. Old potters were working it out properly, removed impurities and made rolls of it. These rolls served then as a semi-finished article for the manufacture itself. The manufacture started with vessels´ bottoms. The roll was swerved into a spiral (the connection points were rubbed over with water) and shaped it into the form of a bowl. Then they let the bowl dry and harden so that it didn’t warp during next processing. After an hour they moistened the bowl’s edges and but earthen ”hoops” on it. Its size corresponded with the desired bowl’s shape. After this storage dried, the primeval potters made a pile around the vessels. It was big enough to burn for at least 2 hours. After all wood burnt down, the earthen products were complete. Not all vessels survived this ”fire test”, some cracked some others were damaged with falling wood.
Modern ceramics and a primeval motif.
Such was the manufacture of ceramic vessels and it didn’t change for millenaries. First after an unknown inventor built a potter’s wheel, the vessels got a perfect shape and their production speeded up. The vessel on the potter’s wheel was rotating all thetime and the potter’s hands gave it the regular shape.
Chinese already devised the manufacture of china in the 6th of 7th century. But they protected the technology very severely. First in the 15th century also the Japanese learned the technology, although they didn’t attained the quality of Chinese porcelain. In those times the East Asian china was very precious commodity all over Europe. It was very rare and people even kept it in their treasuries. After 1557 Portuguese started to deal in china. And especially after 1602 this business was almost exclusively in the hands of the Dutch. Then the porcelain became a much-sought-for complement of court and noble interiors. The imported porcelain irritated the European and incited them to unceasing , but inconsequential attempts at making such ceramic matter. These failures led to an optic imitation, the producers tried to conform to the shape and design of East Asian porcelain. And so the faience was born. The producers in Delfy – Holland reached such good results, that their products could compete with the imported Japanese porcelain. Except this a Delfy workshop of Ary de Milde started to manufacture dishes from hart red stoneware, which imitated the same type of goods from China. Soon it was also imitated in England.
In Meissen Friedrich Böttger together with Ehrenfried Walter Tschirnhausen discovered the composition of this ceramic substance. They were inspired by the goods of Ary de Milde. In 1708 a manufactory for the production of this stoneware was established in Meissen. Both colleagues tried to discover the composition of the porcelain substance. Finally in 1709 (a year after Tschirnhausen´s death) Böttger was successful in it.
In the next year the first European porcelain manufactory was established in Meissen. Böttger ran it until his death in 1719. The basis of porcelain’s manufacture consists in the preparation of porcelain substance. A half of it is kaolin (white, swum, greasy and plastic earth which arose during complicated conversion of feldspar) and the other half are the non-plastic substances (quarter of feldspar as a flux and a quarter of quartz sand). In 1718 a Dutchman Claudius Innocentius du Paquier established second European porcelain factory in Vienna and since the half of the 18th century many other porcelain factories started to arise in Germany (Berlin, Nymphenburg, Ludwigsburg) and in other Europe countries (England – Chelsea, Derby and Worcester, in France – Sevres and Chantilly).
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| Klasterec around the year 1830 | Brezova around the year 1850 |
The first Czech porcelain factory was established in Slavkov in 1792, the second one was in Klasterec since 1794. The next ones arose in Brezova and Kysibl in 1803. These manufactories got over the failure of production, operational lacks and economic troubles with great difficulties because they had no guarantee from civil servants. These were so afraid from potential threat of the monopolistic position of the Vienna porcelain factory, that they were refusing to pass the privileges of porcelain’s manufacture to the owners. The products were therefore sold as porous goods. Nearly all Carlsbad manufactories were hiding under this pall even in the first quarter of the 19the century (Slavkov received the privilege in 1812, Klasterec and Brezova in 1822 and Kysibl in 1833). First after receiving the privileges the artistic value of porcelain starts to develop. This was happening mainly under the influence of Viennese and Meissen production. Among the mot significant dishes there were mainly the Biedermeier dishes from Carlsbad and also the dishes from second rococo made in the porcelain factories in Klasterec nad Ohri and in Prague.
(picture from web page
http://www.cesky.porcelan.cz/eshop/dtcibulak.asp?ident=743&prvni=1)
