Title: American homes and gardens
Identifier: americanhomesgar81911newy (find matches)
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Architecture, Domestic; Landscape gardening
Publisher: New York : Munn and Co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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HE little town of Meissen, near Dresden, was very recently the scene of a unique celebration. Founded and fortified in 928 by Henry I, of Germany, as an out- post of the Empire, a bulwark against its turbulent Slavonian neighbors, Meissen, one of the oldest towns in the kingdom of Saxony, is famous for its exquisitely beautiful Gothic cathedral, reputed to be the finest place of worship in that style of architecture in Germany. But a fame, even more world-wide, attaches to a spacious range of buildings, with towering chimneys, in which the interest of the votaries of the ceramic art have of late centered, for near here, 200 years, ago, Johann Boettger invented, for Europe, the process of making porcelain, and here, in a frowning fortress overlooking the Elbe, assigned to him for that purpose by the King of Saxony, he instituted and carried on for several years the manufacture of the artistic and decidedly beautiful ware that has made the old Saxony city famous in the art world. The anniversary has just been appropriately celebrated in royal and official circles and by the people of Saxony in general and Meissen in particular, and many prominent people have journeyed to Meissen to participate in the celebration of the two hun- dredth year-day of the institution of an art-industry that has taken a leading position among the most important art interests of Europe. The personage and his discovery, which the celebration commemorates, are of sufficient in- terest to all ceramists, and those interested in the develop- ment of the useful arts, to merit the devotion of a brief space in these columns to a story of Boettger, and what he accomplished for European pottery. Centuries before potters in Europe had any knowledge of the manufacture of porcelain, its production and elab- oration were practiced as familiar arts in the far East and traders to India and China brought back with them, specimens of Chinese and Japanese ware, that excited the admiration of the European manufacturers of white faience and stoneware, and stimulated their emulation. Among the wealthy classes, the finer porcelains of the Orient were valued, often at their weight in gold, and the accumulation of choice specimens, was a "fad" in which the wealthy, of artistic tastes, expended fortunes and was indeed one of the ways in which they demonstrated their superior
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Three exquisite Meissen vases of the Eighteenth Century period

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