Authors: Janet Gleeson
A peerless array of colored enamel wares, many decorated with colors based on the unfortunate Köhler's recipes, was now made
available for sale. In the meantime, the problem of making a pure white body had been gradually addressed by the use of a
combination of feldspar and quartz rather than alabaster as a flux in the paste from 1724 on. One of the most abundant rocks
in the earth's crust, feldspar is a less decomposed form of kaolin and is similarly comprised of alkaline aluminum oxide silicates.
Apart from its ready availability the other big advantage of feldspar over alabaster was that when combined with quartz it
created a more stable mixture during firing. When exposed to the heat of the kiln the feldspar not only melted and filled
the pores in the kaolin, it also fused with the quartz, which lent support to the paste and stopped it from sagging during
the high-temperature firing.
Although Stölzel and his fellow compounders who worked on the improvement could not have realized it, this mixture of kaolin,
feldspar and quartz was in fact identical to that used by potters in China and Japan. Thus by trial and error Meissen had
at last overcome the problem of the porcelain's yellowish tinge that had plagued Böttger, and in so doing had discovered how
to produce a paste that was more stable in firing and brilliantly white. By January 1725 Steinbrück was excitedly noting,
“A large mantelpiece set of seven pieces also painted in red and Japanese colours was sent to the warehouse in Dresden on
the 22nd of this month. It turned out so well that when it was shown to His Royal Majesty he was said to have shown great
pleasure.” At last the beauty and brilliance of Augustus's own porcelain factory was able to equal that of Japanese kakiemon.
Herold's work was inordinately costly. The authorities fretted over his exorbitant charges, and as early as 1720 the agent
Chladni was asked “to see if it would be possible to have his painted porcelain at a lower price.” Even though Meissen was
far more expensive than most Oriental porcelain (except for kakiemon), Herold stood his ground and prices did not come down.
But demand, far from wavering, was carried on the wings of the ascendant fashion for feminine frivolity and luxurious excess
and spread inexorably throughout Europe. When ladies poured from a coffeepot decked with Meissen mandarins or fluttered flirtatious
glances over the rims of tea bowls decked with exotic Indian flowers, these porcelain props became as invaluable an enhancement
of their attractions as their fans, their scent bottles or their maquillage. Meissen, thanks to Herold, was high fashion indeed.
Its fame was fueled not only by its incredible and obvious beauty, but also by the mystery surrounding its manufacture. The
eerily enclosed, prisonlike factory became the subject of much gossip in the letters of visitors to Dresden. Jonas Hanway,
an Irish sea captain who went to Meissen in 1752, observed that, “in order to preserve this art as much as possible a secret,
the fabric at Meissen… is rendered impenetrable to any but those who are immediately employed about the work.”
The expense of Meissen was also much discussed. Hanway said skeptically: “They pretend they cannot execute fast enough the
commissions which they receive even from Arita, as well as from all parts of Europe, and are consequently under no necessity
of lowering the enormous prices.” But one cannot help wondering if Hanway was not missing the point—and that, in fact, in
sophisticated Vienna, in refined Augsburg and even in aristocratic England, buyers caught the craze for Meissen's elegantly
painted porcelains in part because their outlandish cost gave them a chic exclusivity which magnified the frisson of owning
them.
Realizing that Herold was the linchpin of their growing success, the Meissen authorities became increasingly concerned that
he should remain happy and settled in the factory. If he should remove his studio and invaluable expertise elsewhere, the
entire factory's profitability could be ruined. By 1724 Herold was twenty-seven years old and he was earning more than enough
to support a wife and family. Why, wondered the commission, had he not yet married? Was this a sign that he might move on
if a better offer came along?
Herold had no intention of leaving such a profitable source of income, but he played his cards characteristically close to
his chest. Although he would not have admitted it openly, he intended to pick a bride to advance his career. Love, affection
and physical attraction were minor considerations in the great panorama of his impassioned ambition. Asked the reason for
his reluctance to wed, he merely remarked that his lack of a proper role within the Meissen establishment gave him little
to offer the sort of bride he had in mind. The authorities probably never even suspected that Herold had intended all along
to use marriage as a weapon to maneuver them into a position where they would be forced to acknowledge his importance.
The coolly played ruse paid immediate dividends. Shortly afterward, in June 1724, he was formally appointed court painter—a
title that marked an incredible achievement for a man who only four years earlier had run away from Vienna with nothing more
than a handful of pots as a testimonial of his talents. He was now responsible for hiring and overseeing all the Meissen decorators,
as well as having charge of the training of other members of the workforce and supervising the design of shapes and forms
best suited to his decorations. A condition of the promotion was a royal order that he should get married as soon as possible.
Not only was his future now assured, he also had a royal title under his belt and was well able to woo a wife of some social
standing. Within a year he had made clear his intentions to Rahel Eleonore Keil, the daughter of a prosperous Meissen innkeeper
and local councillor. In October of the following year the pair were married at Meissen with all the pomp and ceremony befitting
the union of the only daughter of an important townsman and the king's brilliant and prosperous court painter.
His wedding gift to his carefully selected wife was a delicate porcelain beaker resplendently adorned with her name and the
date of their union. It was a gift of considerable value. Porcelain was so expensive that most workers could never hope to
possess any of the objects they so painstakingly made, but then neither could they hope to command Herold's fees.
The marriage, though long, was sadly ill fated. Herold's ambitions almost certainly included a desire to pass his already
prosperous business on to an heir. This dream must have seemed about to be realized when his wife conceived easily after their
marriage and nine months later Herold's first child, a boy, christened Johann Wilhelm, was born. But the infant was sickly
and died a day later, and over the next decade the same tragedy was to be frequently repeated. Seven more children were born,
of whom one survived until the age of seven, the rest dying within days of their birth.
As Herold grew ever more successful and powerful the deaths of so many children can hardly fail to have contributed to his
embittered and unkind conduct toward his employees. He continued to exploit their skills callously, paying them a fraction
of the money he received from Meissen for their work. Ferociously ambitious as he was, he was also terrified that any of his
most skilled assistants should develop their own artistic styles and then threaten to supersede him. By limiting apprentices
to certain highly specialized subjects he actively discouraged blossoming talent and frowned on any burgeoning artistic individuality.
Assistants were forbidden to sign their work (although some secretly hid their names in the designs). Under-glaze blue designs
were done by the least skilled decorators; others might specialize in landscapes, figures, harbor scenes, chinoiserie, Indian
flowers or gilding, but novice artists were never encouraged to expand their repertoire and never properly trained.
Herold's own artistic style was rigorously imposed by making the artists copy designs he circulated in the decorating workshop
as engravings and sketches. Even experienced decorators were forced to follow house style, and paper patterns with small pinpricks
survive showing how designs were transferred to porcelain by sprinkling carbon dust through the holes—a similar transfer technique
is still in use today. A degree of individual flair was permitted in adapting designs for wares of differing shapes, but for
the most part Herold maintained absolute control over virtually every stroke of the brush.
As part of his new agreement with the factory Herold was paid a modest sum to instruct modelers and other staff on Meissen's
payroll in painting and drawing. This duty was perfunctorily and begrudgingly carried out. Why waste time and risk helping
Meissen to coach decorators with painting skills, reasoned Herold, when it could only lead to his own business suffering?
So training remained superficial and much latent talent was stifled.
Privately Herold justified his domineering attitude to his staff as being in the interests both of workshop efficiency and
of security. Artists trained to paint a limited subject would be able to work more quickly. They would also, he argued, be
less inclined to cause trouble by daring to leave, since restricted training would make them ill equipped to seek employment
elsewhere.
It quickly became apparent that this thinking was fundamentally flawed. Mistreatment of his assistants not only caused profound
misery and undoubted hardship; it also damaged the factory by directly resulting in the defections of many of them. Even though
the training they were given was cursory and although guards watched all comings and goings at the factory, many of Herold's
most talented painters were led, through desperation, shortage of money or the sheer unfairness of the way they were treated,
to take their expertise elsewhere.
Among the lengthy roll call of those who fled Herold's tyrannical regime was his first apprentice, Johann Georg Heintze. Herold
treated the unfortunate and talented decorator abysmally, failing to reward his hard work, never recognizing his increasingly
accomplished designs, and paying him so poorly that he found it impossible to make ends meet and was forced to look for alternative
ways to boost his income.
Meissen by the 1720s was producing far more porcelain than even Herold's studio could decorate, and surplus undecorated pieces
“in the white” were often sold to
Hausmalerei,
independent decorators, who developed a lucrative trade in enameling in their own workshops and selling their wares privately
outside Meissen's jurisdiction. The Meissen directorate was never entirely happy about the
Hausmalerei.
Quality controls were nonexistent, and while some pieces decorated by now famous names such as Aufenwerth, Seuter and Bottengruber
were of a standard every bit as high as those produced internally, others were very inferior.
The authorities worried that this poor-quality output, often shoddy copies of designs produced by artists in Herold's studio,
might damage the factory's hard-won reputation for artistic excellence. But the
Hausmalerei
neatly solved the problem of what to do with the surplus porcelain wares—especially pieces of poor quality that Meissen could
not sell. The trade brought in extra cash, boosting the factory's profits, and so, reluctantly, it was allowed to continue.
But, to safeguard Meissen's reputation, in 1723 Steinbrück came up with the ingenious idea of identifying all genuine pieces
with a mark painted in blue under the glaze. The idea was that such a device would act as a guarantee of quality, eliminating
the possibility of pieces of inferior standard being passed off as the genuine article. The mark eventually decided on was
a pair of crossed swords taken from the Saxon coat of arms. For several years the crossed swords were only sporadically used,
but as, gradually, they were applied to the bases of increasing numbers of factory-decorated wares—usually by the most junior
apprentice—they became synonymous with the name of Meissen.
Little did anyone realize that in years to come Meissen's crossed swords were to become one of the most frequently faked marks
ever invented.
For the poorly paid workers in Herold's employ the temptation to earn a few extra thalers by decorating wares at home was
great, but they were expressly forbidden from dabbling in such trade. But Heintze, like many others in the factory, was acutely
short of money and, doubtless disgruntled by the lack of recognition his skill had attracted, saw no reason not to join in
the lucrative business on the quiet.
Little by little he began to take home white-fired pieces from the factory in order to decorate them in his own spare time
and then sell them on the black market. As the clandestine trade grew he built his own muffle kiln and taught himself color
compounding in order to make his own enamels. Heintze was a friend of Stölzel's, who must have helped him in this field.
But in the tightly knit workshop community it was virtually impossible to keep unauthorized work a secret. The factory still
seethed with intrigue, and the risk of being incriminated by a fellow worker with a grudge or who wanted to gain advantage
with the head of the studio was very real, as Heintze was to discover to his cost. When Herold was tipped off that Heintze
was illicitly decorating porcelain at his home he was at first reluctant to sacrifice such a hardworking and experienced decorator.
Heintze received a stern reprimand, but, as usual, Herold did nothing to rectify the root of his discontent.
Either because he was so desperate for cash, or because he did not treat the warning seriously, Heintze continued undaunted
to decorate porcelain on the side. On discovering this insubordination Herold was incandescent with rage and ordered his arrest
and a search of his lodgings. As expected, a quantity of illicitly decorated porcelain was discovered. Heintze was sent for
trial, found guilty of deception and sentenced to imprisonment in the fortress prison of Königstein—where, in a cruel irony,
he was forced to paint porcelain for his subsistence. But this was not the end of his story.