On 19 September 1763, Frederick II of Prussia purchased the Berlin porcelain manufactory of Ernst Johann Gotzkowsky and founded there the Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur (KPM). On 19 September 2013, an exhibition marking the 250th anniversary of the manufactory’s promotion under royal patronage opened in the suitably regal surroundings of Schloss Charlottenburg. It showcases three aspects of the KPM, around which the exhibition is structured: ‘Creating’, ‘Using’, and ‘Collecting’.
The exhibition opens in the circular hall on the first floor of the palace with a wealth of information derived from the vast KPM archives. These contain everything from the sources of inspiration for porcelain artists to the historical documents and records of how the manufactory was controlled by the king, and combine aspects of business records with those of contemporary art collecting, extending into the twentieth century. This section – ‘Creating’ – begins fittingly with the sale contract to Frederick II that heralded the start of the royal patronage of the manufactory, preserved in the volume of records entitled Documente der Koenigl. Porzellan-manufaktur betreffend den Ankauf und Erwerb des Grundstücks und der Fabrick 1763-1872, (‘Documents of the Royal Porcelain Manufactory pertaining to the purchase and acquisition of the property and factory’). This corpus of original documents encompasses nearly 500 items. There was a strict obligation to maintain meticulous book-keeping and the documentation includes secret manuscripts and formulas for producing porcelain, paints, etc., together with order books such as the Cabinets Orden 1763-87 (‘Cabinet orders’) of Frederick II and his successor Frederick William II. Other documents list regal gifts as well as commissions by middle-class customers, and record the general management of the royal household.
The sources of inspiration for the KPM designers and decorators are illustrated by working drawings, watercolours after nature and book illustrations, progressing to full-scale specifications for converting them into a variety of three-dimensional objects such as pattern books for cup designs, the popularity of which led to an enormous repertoire. A small assortment of fabrics also belongs to the KPM’s pattern designs and are here illustrated with a piece of textile sewn together from 41 silk fragments (1760-1800). Borders of flowers, ribbons and lace-inspired textile-like ornamentation as well as shiny satin or silk fabrics could be effectively imitated on reflective smooth porcelain surfaces, as demonstrated by a plate with a green ribbon decoration and floral painting (c.1780).
Prints from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries form a significant component of the KPM archives, being, both at the time and still today, another important visual resource for training apprentices in composition. On display is an etching of Leçon d’Amour / Amoris Documentum by Charles Dupuis after Antoine Watteau (Paris, 1734), together with a very pretty oval tray with the same scene painted on it in ‘iron red’ (1767-8), very much in Frederick II’s taste for the rococo, which he favoured until the end of his life. The KPM’s library contains nearly 3000 volumes, again providing an important source of information for decorators, especially the book illustrations. These include encyclopedias of natural sciences, such as Friedrich Heinrich Wilhelm Martini’s Allgemeine Geschichte der Natur in alphabetischer Ordnung mit vielen Kupfern (vol. 1, Berlin/Stettin, 1774), which features a coloured etching illustrating the ‘rosy starling’ that provided the inspiration for the decoration of a large dish from Frederick William II’s 1795 service for the Pfaueninsel (Peacock Island, Berlin). Likewise, classical literature and treatises on antiquities were the origin of many designs produced for porcelain, such as a dessert plate showing ‘Syrinx being pursued by Pan’, from Frederick II’s 1783 service decorated with mythological stories, derived from etchings in a 1770 edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses published in Paris.
In the great oval hall overlooking the park at Charlottenburg, the second part of the exhibition – ‘Using’ – features a table laid as it would be for a formal meal with items from the special gift of honour commissioned for Crown Prince Frederick William (later Frederick III) and his wife Victoria for their silver wedding anniversary, 25 January 1883, displayed together with a documented menu of eleven courses provided for the Berlin court at the same date. Fourteen Prussian cities collaborated in the commission for a fully equipped dining room to be installed for the royal couple at the Kronprinzenpalais on Unter den Linden in Berlin, with a dinner service of 400 pieces of porcelain to be provided by the KPM. This was later broken up and sold but the Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten was able to acquire 100 pieces in 2012, from which a selection are presented here to the public for the first time, forming the centrepiece of the KPM’s commemoration. The design follows closely Frederick II’s second Potsdam Service, of 1766-8, adopting its original relief pattern and trellis work embellished with small garlands of flowers and a delicately painted bouquet in the centre, most probably designed by Frederick II himself. The KPM was renowned for the splendour and size of its dinner services, twenty-one of which were produced during Frederick II’s reign, and he claimed he was his own best customer. The 1883 version, with a number of pieces painted by the Berlin artist Adolph Menzel, included a number of individual dishes which had not been required in the eighteenth century. In keeping with the new practice of dining à la russe (in successive courses), elaborate porcelain vases, baskets and bowls on stands with perforated borders were created to hold the arrangements of flowers, fruit and confectionary that formed the centrepiece of the table, which had previously been taken up with the spread of dishes all served at once à la française. The display provides a wonderful opportunity for the twenty-first-century visitor to see these objects in context, as part of the whole ensemble of silver, glasses and different items in the porcelain service.
The ‘Collecting’ section traces the artistic development of the KPM through a display of ‘Unknown Treasures from Private Collections in Berlin’, as the section’s subtitle informs visitors. While a little more information on the provenance of the pieces on display would have been welcome, it is nonetheless a unique opportunity to see Berlin porcelain not on view in public collections. In featuring porcelain lent to the exhibition from private collections, it emphasises the importance of the objects being prized, not so much for their utilitarian functions, but as luxurious items intended for display by their nineteenth-century owners and likewise today traded as antiques.
The consistently high standard of artistic design and production of Berlin porcelain has hardly changed over 250 years. In its early days, the KPM’s best artists had been wooed away from Meissen and with their expertise they were to develop the KPM’s own distinctive style. Friedrich Elias Meyer, trained by Johann Joachim Kändler at Meissen, was to play a major role as master modeller, producing lively colourful figures such as the 1763 ‘Shepherdess as an Allegory of Earth’, which delicately clutches a basket of fruit in one hand and holds a pear in the other. In 1768 he produced a more robust pair of Chinese figures, derived from a pair of Malabar musicians originally made during his employment in Meissen. The man is about to clash his cymbals and the lady, wearing a floral dress and mauve ruched over-garment with green sleeves, has a parrot perched on her arm; in both cases, however, the 1765 rococo Meissen bases have been substituted by simple square plinths. Another early piece is a 1765 coffee pot, based on a type designed by Kändler with a rocaille spout and smooth body, here decorated with the famous purple mosaic decoration for which the KPM would become famous and a harbour scene painted by Carl Wilhelm Boehme, who joined the Berlin manufactory from Meissen with F E Meyer. Frederick II was passionate about porcelain, determined that his production should equal in quality that of the Meissen factory, which during his occupation of Dresden in the Seven Years’ War he had unsuccessfully tried to bring to Berlin. He was also determined to compete with Sèvres, as is evident in a number of pieces of a déjeuner service (1769) featuring chinoiserie decoration in black and orange with gold edging, combined with scenes after Boucher. From the time the KPM was founded flower painting was its forte, and the painting of flowers soon changed from the earlier small-scale secondary motifs to become major motifs, such as those decorating a most attractive tureen made as part of a service for Frederick II. It features the KPM’s characteristic relief decoration, gold banding and a knob in the form of a small boy in a colourful costume with a basket of fruit modelled by F E Meyer. One of the most charming of the early exhibits is a solitaire coffee service of c.1775, with paintings of birds and butterflies and a purple mosaic decoration surrounding the edge, displayed together with its original leather box, a rare survival. Outstanding and similarly of this date are the two pot-pourri vases with perforated covers modelled again by F E Meyer, where the influence of his time at Meissen is apparent. One is painted with pink roses, the other with green flowers, and both are framed by raised leaves tied with a pink bow and adorned with handles modelled as lively satyrs’ heads.
From 1770 neoclassical elements are mixed with the forms of the rococo. Motifs such as laurel garlands, snakes, urns and fluted pedestals became popular, with the KPM also specialising in the imitation in porcelain of marble and the decorative qualities of different materials. This is illustrated with a pair of candlesticks (1775), which take the form of pinkish marble urns on fluted pedestals adorned with lion masks and swags of laurel executed in over-glaze gilding. White marble imitated in biscuit ware is represented here by a classical figure of a Vestal Virgin, personifying friendship, who sacrifices flowers at an altar accompanied by a distinctly rococo putto, modelled by Johann Georg Müller (1790-95). A seven-piece déjeuner service of 1785 showing colourful painted scenes of the adventures of Telemachus against a cobalt blue background with a classical pattern in gold is taken from illustrations by Charles Monnet for the 1773 edition of Fénélon’s Les Aventures de Télémaque. The fashion for cameos and medallions representing gods, heroes, poets and rulers of classical antiquity, transposed onto KPM porcelain primarily by the painter Franz Tittelbach, led to a preference for silhouette portraits as motifs. This is exemplified here on a small white and gold cylindrical table monument (1786) with the stippled profiles of Frederick II, Prince Henry and Crown Prince Frederick William executed in grisaille and crowned with a gilt eagle safeguarding the crown and sceptre, the latter also being the mark of all KPM porcelain. The death of Frederick II in 1786 saw the end of the most significant and artistically fruitful period at the KPM.
Frederick William II (reigned 1786-97) showed no inclination to get so closely involved with the production of porcelain as his predecessor and in 1787 the Royal Porcelain Manufactory Commission was established. The KPM, following Vienna, entered into an agreement with the Berlin Royal Academy of Arts for its professors to provide free instruction for the KPM painters and apprentices at the Academy studios. The introduction of new kilns burning coal, a proven success in the British pottery industry, as well as other changes in methods, led to technical advances, coupled with the improvement of ceramic pastes, glazes and colours, all resulting in exceptionally smooth surfaces able to be decorated with a wide variety of designs. In 1806 Napoleon entered Berlin and the main factory was required to produce commissions without payment for the Empress Josephine. Production continued at a high standard despite the French occupation, however, as exemplified by two plates from 1810 featuring representations of the Capitoline Venus painted in minutely detailed grisaille, framed and set within a broad painted band, the first in imitation of lapis lazuli and the second in pale blue not unlike that of Sèvres. The influence and popularity of Egypt during the early nineteenth century is demonstrated by a pot-pourri vase from c.1800 based on a canopic jar and decorated with ribbons of Egyptian hieroglyphs painted in gold. This is combined with another design, favoured in Berlin, of a continuous band of flowers known as fleurs en terrasse, derived from the type of garden paintings found at Pompeii. A remarkable covered cup and saucer from 1810, also in the form of a canopic jar (the cover is embellished by a modelled Egyptian god head with a small crown) and painted in blue and gold twisted stripes over a white body, further illustrates the Egyptomania fashion of this period.
After 1815, with the general economic revitalisation that followed the end of the Napoleonic wars, the products of the KPM became increasing ostentatious, in particular the large presentation vases it produced. These luxurious and costly items were mostly commissioned as gifts, often with a diplomatic function, throughout the nineteenth century. They are technically superb, as demonstrated by an example on display that dates from 1817. It is decorated with a minutely detailed copy of Venus and Adonis by the seventeenth-century Italian artist, Francesco Albani, in a gilt frame on the belly of the vase; the intricacy of the burnished gold decoration almost completely conceals the white porcelain. Together with plates, these vases became the principal vehicles for painted views, and a large covered cup on display, also from 1817, features a framed view of Charlottenburg. Regal portraits provided parallel subject matter to such views. An earlier example of a presentation vase of this type, produced in 1805, the same year that the Treaty of Potsdam saw Prussia enter the Third Coalition against Napoleon, and a year before the latter’s entry to Berlin, displays the portrait of Queen Luise. Copied from a pastel portrait by Johann Heinrich Schröder, the likeness is framed in gold, and set against a background of imitation pink marble decorated with bands of lapis lazuli.
The exhibition includes many further examples of KPM porcelain from the entire span of the manufactory’s history. The later nineteenth century saw a range of exotic and elaborate objects produced in historicist styles followed by a turn towards Art Nouveau. Many were designed for international competition in trade fairs and world exhibitions and reflected the beginnings of modernism at the turn of the twentieth century. Less familiar exhibits include a paperweight commemorating the completion of 4000 kilometres of autobahn under the Third Reich in 1941, and a remarkable figure of an athletic triton riding a rearing horse with a fishy tail from a table centrepiece entitled The Birth of Beauty, commissioned in white porcelain for Joachim von Ribbentrop, modelled in 1939 and later cast in 1950. After World War II there were new beginnings, marked by designs that sought to link traditional forms with modern innovation and simplicity.
These displays are an informative introduction to the different aspects that underlay Frederick II’s porcelain manufactory from the second half of the eighteenth century, and the ideas which inspired artists’ designs and their application to the porcelain of the KPM. The examples on view allow the non-specialist visitor to follow the development of Berlin porcelain and recognise and evaluate its outstanding achievements. The show does not pretend to be an academic exhibition, but succeeds as a splendid celebration of 250 years of the Royal Porcelain Manufactory in Berlin.
Under the auspices of the Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg, the catalogue of the exhibition is a special issue of KERAMOS (Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft der Keramikfreunde e.V.), 2013/211.
KPM. Gestalten, Benutzen, Sammeln is at Schloss Charlottenburg from 19 September 2013 to 5 January 2014.