Before leaving the subject of French porcelain, something must be said of the cluster of PARISIAN FACTORIES for making hard-paste china, which arose in many cases under Court patronage after the introduction of the new material at Sèvres. The exclusive privileges of the royal factory, designed to repress all attempts at competition within the borders of France, had been one by one abandoned, having become gradually of no effect. In 1787 complete liberty was accorded to all French manufacturers to pursue all the methods employed at Sèvres, including the jealously-protected use of gilding. As a rule only useful wares were made in the smaller factories, but these were often of considerable merit. The use of gold as the only decoration on a white ground became increasingly popular, and much charming ware is ornamented in this manner. A typical instance may be cited in the spirit-kettle made at the Clignancourt works, comprised in the series of Parisian hard-paste in the Fitzhenry gift. The affectation by these small factories of classical forms is exemplified in the same collection by a ewer with oblong basin decorated in gold and blue, made in the duc d’Angoulême’s kilns in the rue Bondy, which are also famous for the pretty cornflower-sprig pattern afterwards popular in English china.
Vase, Chelsea-Derby, 1770-1784, with handles in the form of female terminal figures in biscuit porcelain; on the front a medallion with the subject of Celadon and Amelia. Height, 15¼ in. Jones Collection.
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.