10 among the upper echelons of society fostered a refining of elite lifestyle culture. Expanding trade relations with East Asia and the New World brought luxury wares and new culinary delights to Europe, firing the elite with a passion for all things exotic. One particularly sought-after product was porcelain, of which there was no equivalent in Europe, and which with its noble delicacy and material quality was regarded as epitomizing China’s high level of civilization. As a result, efforts in Central Europe to uncover the secret of making this fascinating material became all the more intensive, eventually leading to the discovery of the formula for the ‘white gold’ in Dresden in 1708. It is thus hardly surprising that an entrepreneur like Claudius Innocentius du Paquier, spurred on by an age of burgeoning enterprise and encouraged by direct support from the emperor, spared no effort in setting up production of this precious and highly desirable commodity in Vienna. This exhibition paints a picture of multifarious and sometimes hazardous alchemistic experiments, of trade routes and cultural transfer, of the subtle role of diplomacy, of industrial espionage and ingenious invention, of ambition and entrepreneurial culture. It focuses deliberately on the period between 1718 and 1744 in which the second porcelain manufactory to be founded in Europe produced its wares under the management of du Paquier before being bought up and acquired for the Crown by Maria Theresa. Porcelain was the perfect material to express the spirit of aristocratic life and underscore aspirations to subtle elegance, as its possession both signified the accrual of social distinction and embodied increasing cultivation and the refinement of daily life. At the same time, in its sheen, costliness and even its fragility, it corresponded to the sensibility of the times and could be understood as a symbol of courtly society, as Samuel Wittwer explains so illuminatingly in his essay in the present volume. Detail from cat. 133
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