PORCELAIN: A HISTORY FROM THE HEART OF EUROPE
"This is the book on porcelain we have been waiting for. . . . A remarkable achievement."âEdmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes.
Porcelain was invented in medieval Chinaâbut its secret recipe was first reproduced in Europe by an alchemist in the employ of the Saxon king Augustus the Strong. Saxonyâs revered Meissen factory could not keep porcelainâs ingredients secret for long, however, and scores of Holy Roman princes quickly founded their own mercantile manufactories, soon to be rivaled by private entrepreneurs, eager to make not art but profits. As porcelainâs uses multiplied and its price plummeted, it lost much of its identity as aristocratic ornament, instead taking on a vast number of banal, yet even more culturally significant, roles. By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it became essential to bourgeois dining, and also acquired new functions in insulator tubes, shell casings, and teeth.
Weaving together the experiences of entrepreneurs and artisans, state bureaucrats and female consumers, chemists and peddlers, Porcelain traces the remarkable story of âwhite goldâ from its origins as a princely luxury item to its fate in Germanyâs cataclysmic twentieth century. For three hundred years, porcelain firms have come and gone, but the industry itself, at least until very recently, has endured. After Augustus, porcelain became a quintessentially German commodity, integral to provincial pride, artisanal industrial production, and a familial sense of home.
Telling the story of porcelainâs transformation from coveted luxury to household necessity and flea market staple, Porcelain offers a fascinating alternative history of art, business, taste, and consumption in Central Europe.
- Softcover
- 544 pages
- 6 x 9.25 in.
Original: $24.95
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$8.73PORCELAIN: A HISTORY FROM THE HEART OF EUROPE
"This is the book on porcelain we have been waiting for. . . . A remarkable achievement."âEdmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes.
Porcelain was invented in medieval Chinaâbut its secret recipe was first reproduced in Europe by an alchemist in the employ of the Saxon king Augustus the Strong. Saxonyâs revered Meissen factory could not keep porcelainâs ingredients secret for long, however, and scores of Holy Roman princes quickly founded their own mercantile manufactories, soon to be rivaled by private entrepreneurs, eager to make not art but profits. As porcelainâs uses multiplied and its price plummeted, it lost much of its identity as aristocratic ornament, instead taking on a vast number of banal, yet even more culturally significant, roles. By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it became essential to bourgeois dining, and also acquired new functions in insulator tubes, shell casings, and teeth.
Weaving together the experiences of entrepreneurs and artisans, state bureaucrats and female consumers, chemists and peddlers, Porcelain traces the remarkable story of âwhite goldâ from its origins as a princely luxury item to its fate in Germanyâs cataclysmic twentieth century. For three hundred years, porcelain firms have come and gone, but the industry itself, at least until very recently, has endured. After Augustus, porcelain became a quintessentially German commodity, integral to provincial pride, artisanal industrial production, and a familial sense of home.
Telling the story of porcelainâs transformation from coveted luxury to household necessity and flea market staple, Porcelain offers a fascinating alternative history of art, business, taste, and consumption in Central Europe.
- Softcover
- 544 pages
- 6 x 9.25 in.
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"This is the book on porcelain we have been waiting for. . . . A remarkable achievement."âEdmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes.
Porcelain was invented in medieval Chinaâbut its secret recipe was first reproduced in Europe by an alchemist in the employ of the Saxon king Augustus the Strong. Saxonyâs revered Meissen factory could not keep porcelainâs ingredients secret for long, however, and scores of Holy Roman princes quickly founded their own mercantile manufactories, soon to be rivaled by private entrepreneurs, eager to make not art but profits. As porcelainâs uses multiplied and its price plummeted, it lost much of its identity as aristocratic ornament, instead taking on a vast number of banal, yet even more culturally significant, roles. By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it became essential to bourgeois dining, and also acquired new functions in insulator tubes, shell casings, and teeth.
Weaving together the experiences of entrepreneurs and artisans, state bureaucrats and female consumers, chemists and peddlers, Porcelain traces the remarkable story of âwhite goldâ from its origins as a princely luxury item to its fate in Germanyâs cataclysmic twentieth century. For three hundred years, porcelain firms have come and gone, but the industry itself, at least until very recently, has endured. After Augustus, porcelain became a quintessentially German commodity, integral to provincial pride, artisanal industrial production, and a familial sense of home.
Telling the story of porcelainâs transformation from coveted luxury to household necessity and flea market staple, Porcelain offers a fascinating alternative history of art, business, taste, and consumption in Central Europe.
- Softcover
- 544 pages
- 6 x 9.25 in.
