115 The Blue Onion Pattern and the Manufactory’s economic fortunes under Marcolini The preceding observations have shown that the Blue Onion Pattern enjoyed commodity status and was produced for commercial purposes from the outset. It did not appear on the porcelain tableware used at court during the Augustean age. It was a plain, straightforward, valuefor-money household pattern. Blue Onion Pattern ware was bought in large quantities at various trade fairs and in the Manufactory’s sales warehouses, something Augustus the Strong was already calling for in 1731. Just how great demand for it was is evidenced by the frequency with which it was imitated in the second half of the 18th century, both on faience and on porcelains from manufactories such as those in Berlin (KPM), Copenhagen or Fürstenberg. This kind of decoration in underglaze blue accorded with prevailing tastes and could be produced at reasonable prices owing to its only having to be fired twice, to its being painted in monochrome and, lastly, to its being rendered in a more diagrammatic form from around 1780. The pronounced increase in the sale of porcelains painted in blue, with the exception of the Blue Onion Pattern, in the final quarter of the 18th century was closely bound up with political and social developments, as was the ensuing slump in demand. The period 1763 –1800 witnessed the heyday of the manufactory system in Saxony. Its rapid emergence led, amongst other things, to the formation of a new industrial bourgeoisie – the manufactory proprietors – and class of free wage-earners that included redundant miners, farm labourers, immigrants etc. Even the aristocracy adapted to the altered economic situation and approved the setting-up of manufactories. The craft guilds, by contrast, were highly critical of the trend. They opposed the adoption and extension of new production methods as embodied in manufactories that embraced the division of labour and mechanical means of production and, in so doing, changed the working world and facilitated mass production. The manufactories’ success was also aided by economic policies pursued by the Saxon State such as the monetary and mercantile system or the awarding of premiums and tax concessions. A system of protecting patents and registered designs was likewise introduced. Advances of this kind were what ultimately paved the way for a middle-class society. The State’s objective was to benefit from the financial success of the manufactory process without endangering its own social system, that of the absolutist feudal state.
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