Learn the classic porcelain painting techniques from Meissen (Germany) that rank among the most beautiful and precious of all porcelain art. In many full-color, step-by-step illustrations, the author shows how the porcelain painter can create decorations in the Meissen manner. Especially popular are thirty-six flower motifs, the classic onion pattern, and green grapevine decorations.
Here is a wealth of painting knowledge and an introduction to the time honored techniques of porcelain painting, the necessary tools and the designs. The central focus of the book is the classic flower painting, but it also presents modern Art Deco designs. Numerous step-by-step instructions and color photographs make this an ideal book for amateur and professional painters.
Meissen porcelain is eagerly collected throughout the world and traded vigorously at antique shows, auctions, and on the Internet. Of the few books available on this beautiful German porcelain, none includes current market values - but Jim and Susan Harran's new Meissen Porcelain does! The authors of the bestselling three-volume series, Collectible Cups & Saucers, and another volume, Dresden Porcelain Studios, have produced a book that features everyday items available in the marketplace, not the eighteenth century museum pieces found in many Meissen books. The majority of pieces featured date from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1950s. More than 625 color photographs are included, along with a helpful marks section. Meissen Porcelain provides historical information about the beautiful city of Meissen and a brief history of the Meissen manufactory itself, as well as discussions on decorating motifs and how Meissen porcelain is made. The book includes chapters on decorative porcelain, flower painting, Oriental motifs, Meissen's famous Blue Onion pattern, figures, copycats, and useful information for the collector.
Porcelain imported from China was the most highly coveted new medium in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Europe. Its pure white color, translucency, and durability, as well as the delicacy of decoration, were impossible to achieve in European earthenware and stoneware. In response, European ceramic factories set out to discover the process of producing porcelain in the Chinese manner, with significant artistic, technical, and commercial ramifications for Britain and the Continent. Indeed, not only artisans, but kings, noble patrons, and entrepreneurs all joined in the quest, hoping to gain both prestige and profit from the enterprises they established. This beautifully illustrated volume showcases ninety works that span the late sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century and reflect the major currents of European porcelain production. Each work is illustrated with glorious new photography, accompanied by analysis and interpretation by one of the leading experts in European decorative arts. Among the wide range of porcelains selected are rare blue-and-white wares and figures from Italy, superb examples from the Meissen factory in Germany and the Sèvres factory in France, and ceramics produced by leading British eighteenth-century artisans. Taken together, they reveal why the Metropolitan Museum’s holdings in this field are among the finest in the world. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana}
Shapely Bodies: The Image of Porcelain in Eighteenth-Century France constructs the first cultural history of porcelain making in France. It takes its title from two types of “bodies” treated in this study: the craft of porcelain making shaped clods of earth into a clay body to produce high-end commodities and the French elite shaped human bodies into social subjects with the help of makeup, stylish patterns, and accessories. These practices crossed paths in the work of artisans, whose luxury objects reflected and also influenced the curves of fashion in the eighteenth century. French artisans began trials to reproduce fine Chinese porcelain in the 1660s. The challenge proved impossible until they found an essential ingredient, kaolin, in French soil in the 1760s. Shapely Bodies differs from other studies of French porcelain in that it does not begin in the 1760s at the Sèvres manufactory when it became technically possible to produce fine porcelain in France, but instead ends there. Without the secret of Chinese porcelain, artisans in France turned to radical forms of experimentation. Over the first half of the eighteenth century, they invented artificial alternatives to Chinese porcelain, decorated them with French style, and, with equal determination, shaped an identity for their new trade that distanced it from traditional guild-crafts and aligned it with scientific invention. The back story of porcelain making before kaolin provides a fascinating glimpse into the world of artisanal innovation and cultural mythmaking. To write artificial porcelain into a history of “real” porcelain dominated by China, Japan, and Meissen in Saxony, French porcelainiers learned to describe their new commodity in language that tapped into national pride and the mythic power of French savoir faire. Artificial porcelain cut such a fashionable image that by the mid-eighteenth century, Louis XV appropriated it for the glory of the crown. When the monarchy ended, revolutionaries reclaimed French porcelain, the fruit of a century of artisanal labor, for the Republic. Tracking how the porcelain arts were depicted in documents and visual arts during one hundred years of experimentation, Shapely Bodies reveals the politics behind the making of French porcelain’s image. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
Now the standard reference. More than 1200 illustrations, 282 in color, show the history of the Meissen porcelain manufactory in Germany and the products it produced. Years of meticulous research in the Meissen archives have culminated in this unexcelled reference book. Special attention is given to the 19th and 20th century products of the manufactory, which have been neglected in most books on Meissen.
