18 to supplying the diplomatic gifts, in 1719 the manufactory also made its first commercial exports: an archival record mentions that ‘whole batches’ of Vienna porcelain were dispatched to Hungary and Turkey.5 Conversely, fine horses and splendid items of display tableware were brought to Vienna for the emperor by the Ottoman grand ambassador, the seasoned polyglot diplomat Ibrahim Pasha, who shortly after was invited to be present at the public banquet held on 20 August 1719 to mark the marriage of Archduchess Maria Josepha (1699–1757) to the Saxon crown prince Friedrich August, which the ambassador attended incognito in a private box provided for him at the summer palace of Favorita. ‘OF ESPECIAL BEAUTY’ The new-won freedom laid the ground for forward-looking ideas, with the continuation of Absolutism proving no hindrance to progress as the more cosmopolitan nobility actively demonstrated their resolute concern to be à la moderne and thus absolutely up-to-date.6 The creations of the early Vienna manufactory – ‘of especial beauty’ (‘von sonderbarer Schönheit’) – seem to have been made in response to this mood, tailored to their noble patrons’ striving to be at the cutting edge of new trends. ‘Entirely new in their manner,’7 they clearly sprang from an irrepressible and constant flow of spontaneous fantasy and wit, created in quick succession without regard for any economic rationale. As one would expect from a recently developed material and given the high demands made by its arcane production technique, they are experimental in character and admittedly variable in their artistic level. They embody a happy co-existence of the scientifc and the marvellous. Owing to the paucity of archival evidence, the early history of the manufactory founded by Claudius Innocentius du Paquier (c. 1680–1751) can only be fathomed with a broad, lateral-thinking approach that takes account not only of its location, principal protagonists, and network of contacts and associations but also of the complex of various reasons why people were motivated to make, admire or possess porcelain. The new feeling of life in the imperial capital had first become evident in the form of architecture, in imposing edifices visible from afar. The fact that every new palace was a manifestation of personal taste and token of reliability was critical to the process in which the nobility, particularly the high nobility, established their urban presence in the vicinity of the Hofburg. Leading architects, painters and sculptors vied with one another in the building and decoration of seats of pleasure and noble independence, whether grand country houses or garden palaces outside Vienna’s city walls. Amongst the latter, the finest was the conspicuously Italianate palace of Prince Johann Adam Andreas I von Liechtenstein (1657– 1712) in the suburb of Rossau (fig. 2). Conspicuous display, however, was no longer the sole priority. Within sight of the garden palace, on his estate, he created what he considered a model urban development; significantly named ‘Liechtenthal’, it offered entrepreneurs new conditions for pursuing their businesses. Prince Karl Eusebius von Liechtenstein (1611–1684), Johann Adam Andreas’s father, had once put into words what it meant to act with a conscious view to enduring effect, and to do so on the basis of a truly high-born mind, ‘the essence of which, however, should lie in being eager to know [curios] what things are beautiful, choice and artistic, worthy of loving, desiring and practising.’8 In Heinrich Zedler’s Universallexicon, ‘Curiosität’ is defined with a certain ambivalence. On the one hand it is equated with discontentment with the will of God; on the other hand, however, because all curiosity is a delight to the mind, it does possess a useful property in that it ‘awakens thoughts’. And at the end, early Enlightenment thought comes to the surface: ‘And thus, to consider this usefulness strengthens and justifies the curiosity of those who reflect and ponder with good progress, and who apply their minds to lighting upon perspicacious truths.’9 3 The treaty of Passarowitz (in Serbian Požarevac, then a village, now an administrative town south of Belgrade) brought the Venetian-Austrian Turkish War (1716– 1718, Austria’s sixth such war), to an end and brought the Habsburgs territorial gains that extended its south-east Balkan frontier as far as it was ever to reach. For a wealth of further material, see QhoD, digital scholarly edition of Habsburg- Ottoman diplomatic sources, Project 1, ‘The Grand Embassies of Damian Hugo von Virmont und Ibrahim Pasha (1719/ 1720)’, Insitute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Graz), https://qhod.net/ context:vipa, last accessed 13. 1. 2025. 4 Zelleke 2009 b, figs. 11.14, 11.16. 5 Johann Melchior Steinbrück to Christian Adam Anacker, secretary to the Saxon legation in Vienna, Porzellanmanufaktur Meißen, Betriebsarchiv (IAf3, fol. 299), ill. in Neuwirth 2006, 15. 6 As Zedler’s Universallexikon puts it, ‘heutig und jetzig’, see Zedler 1731/54, pp. 385/728. 7 ‘von ganz neuer Façon’. Wienerisches Diarium, supplement to no. 61, 30 July 1729. 8 ‘dessen wehsenheit iedoch sein sollte, curios zu sein, was schenes, rares und kinstliches ist zu schatzen und zu lieben, zu verlangen und zu ieben’ Quoted from Haupt 1990, 115. 9 ‘Weil alle Curiosität den Verstand ergötzet ... sie erwecket Gedancken.’ ‘Und eben die Erwegung dieses Nutzens bekräfftiget und rechtfertiget die Curiosität derer, die mit gutem Fortgange nachdencken, und scharfsinnige Wahrheiten zu erfinden trachten.’ Zedler 1731/1754, vol. 24, s. v. ‘Curiosität’, pp. 99 –100/ 172–174. ◄ Fig. 1 Du Paquier Manufactory, Vienna Rosewater ewer and basin, c. 1735 Porcelain, overglaze enamel colours, gilding Istanbul, Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Inv. 16/773
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTMyNjA1