Pair of centers for dessert service. Meissen.

Pair of centers for dessert service. MEISSEN. Germany, late nineteenth century-early twentieth century.
In glazed and glazed porcelain, with slip applications.
Presents signature mark on the back and numbering: 2863 and 2858.
In good condition.
Measurements: 89 x 28,5 x 22 cm.

Pair of Meissen porcelain centers. The quality of the manufacture is appreciated in every detail: the flowers and borders worked in relief around the bowls of sinuous profiles, the fineness of the eighteenth-century dress of the couple, the range of pastel tones in contrast with the gold of the fillets, and the sculptural modeling of the recumbent bodies.

The Meissen Manufactory was the first European factory to produce authentic porcelain. The manufacture was started by the scientist Ehrenfried Walther von Tchirnhaus in 1708, and after his untimely death his work was continued by Joahnn Friedrich Böttger, who remained practically imprisoned on the factory premises in order to protect the secret of the porcelain formula. The production of Meissen porcelain began in 1710, one year after the factory was founded by Augustus the Strong, and soon achieved great fame throughout Europe. In order to prevent forgeries, he introduced his famous mark, two crossed swords, in 1720, making his one of the oldest pottery marks in existence (it still remains on the pieces of Meissen's heir firm, the Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen GMBH). Initially, Meissen's production imitated oriental production, especially Japanese kakiemon ("indianische Blumen"), although enameled pieces with landscape, floral and gallant themes were also produced, the latter derived from the painting of the Frenchman Antoine Watteau. Undecorated glazed porcelain pieces were also produced, which were sold to other workshops, where they were decorated with enamels. However, in 1717 a former Meissen worker, Samuel Stöltzel, sold the secret of porcelain to a manufactory in Vienna, and by 1760 there were about thirty manufacturers of genuine porcelain in Europe. However, most of these manufactories produced soft-paste porcelain, due to the difficulty of accessing kaolin, the basic ingredient of authentic porcelain (hard paste). After an initial production of rococo style, which evolved towards neoclassical in the 1750s, in the nineteenth century we witnessed a new style known as "second rococo", inspired by the first productions of the manufacture, which coexisted with other historicisms, including the sculpture in round bulk, mainly in glazed porcelain, following models of both rococo and neoclassical.