48 At the end of the seventeenth century, Count Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnhaus (1651–1707) set about prospecting for minerals in the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge) on the Saxon side of the border with Bohemia. There had been mining, metal production, metal-working and glass- making in these mountain ranges since the Middle Ages.1 Tschirnhaus succeeded in cutting unusually large burning glasses (fig. 1) and concave mirrors out of blocks of glass, using them to achieve temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees Celsius in order to conduct smelting experiments with various earths and minerals.2 After a time he was ordered by Augustus the Strong to oversee the alchemist and self-proclaimed maker of gold Johann Friedrich Böttger (1682–1719), whom the elector had had imprisoned in the Albrechtsburg fortress at Meissen. Together with mining and metal-working experts from Freiberg, they performed experiments smelting various earths in specially built furnaces.3 In 1707, Böttger and Tschirnhaus, together with Pabst von Ohain, finally succeeded in firing red stoneware, afterwards known as Böttger stoneware (fig. 2). A few months later Böttger made his first successful attempt at firing a white translucent body from a mixture of white Colditz clay (a type of kaolin or ‘china clay’), Freiberg calcite, quartz and alabaster in his laboratory on the Jungfernbastei in Dresden.4 On 28 March 1709 he informed the Saxon court chancellery in writing of his success – thus marking the birth of European hard-paste porcelain.5 The manufactory at the Albrechtsburg in Meissen was founded on 6 June 1710. Böttger was appointed administrator and worked on improving his discovery, with the aim of increasing the purity of the body and perfecting the glaze. Eventually he realized that kaolin constituted the key component of the formula. The secret knowledge of the ingredients and firing of hard-paste porcelain subsequently arrived in Vienna.6 The driving force behind all these endeavours was the aim of increasing domestic production of wares through innovation and the establishing of manufactories, thus achieving the greatest possibly economy in production and reducing expensive imports.7 Fig. 1 Burning glass made at the Tschirnhaus glass works Dresden, c. 1700 Glass, ground; wood Technisches Museum Wien Inv. 10699 Fig. 2 Meissen Porcelain Manufactory Teapot with Laub- und Bandelwerk 1710/13 Böttger stoneware Private collection
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