19 MATERIAL OF THE FUTURE The arts of the early eighteenth century were profoundly concerned with the matter of appearance and reality. The promotion of the sciences was considered one of the princely virtues. Nobles travelled for study purposes to England and the Dutch Republic of the United Provinces, where scientific works could be published free of the constraints of censorship. The best-known Vienna palaces not only had well-ordered libraries but were also fitted out with laboratories. Clocks, too, as instruments for measuring time, had a special place in the princely acquisition of knowledge and were given fine cases, some of which are the most fantastical creations of the Du Paquier manufactory. ‘Curiosität’ was in any case definitely at work when Claudius Innocentius du Paquier, with a small group of financiers and specialists, began preparing his extraordinary project of establishing a porcelain manufactory. For centuries, East Asian porcelain had counted as one of the wondrously strange things whose production was assigned to the realm of magic. Attempts to imitate the translucent white material, fragile and yet hard enough to be extremely durable, had hitherto only yielded unsatisfactory results that came nowhere near the real thing. The European discovery of how to make porcelain was thus one of the eighteenth century’s greatest sensations. It was a triumph of science and in cultural terms a leap into the future. But the aura of mystery remained, leaving its mark on how the material was perceived, exciting human desire for it, and thus raising its monetary value (fig. 3). With the advent of European hard-paste porcelain, a medium had become available that not only possessed outstanding practical qualities but also had an aesthetic potential that enabled it to develop independently of the rules of contemporary art. Fig. 2 Christian Hilfgott Brand View towards Vienna over the suburb of Rossau with the Liechtenstein Garden Palace and its Belvedere, 1735 Oil on canvas Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover Inv. PAM 766
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