Early 18th Century Meissen Oval Wall Beveled Mirror Pair of Cherubs, Germany

About Meissen Porcelain (Manufacturer)

Since its founding in 1710, the Meissen porcelain manufactory has stood for the highest-quality porcelain and the utmost workmanship, represented around the world with the insignia of two Crossed Swords in cobalt blue. The quality of Meissen porcelain has its beginnings in the manufacturer’s own mine near the city of Meissen, where the purest kaolin is sourced day after day. This white clay is the key to the striking radiance of Meissen porcelain. The precise blending of kaolin with native feldspar and quartz has been refined in Meissen over the past 300 years and is still completed by hand to this day.
In its first decades, Meissen mostly looked to Asian models, producing wares based on Japanese Kakiemon ceramics and pieces with Chinese-inflected decorations, called chinoiserie. During the 1720s its painters drew inspiration from the works of Watteau, and the scenes of courtly life, fruits and flowers that adorned fashionable textiles and wallpaper. It was in this period that Meissen introduced its famous cobalt-blue crossed swords logo—derived from the arms of the Elector of Saxony as Arch-Marshal of the Holy Roman Empire—to distinguish its products from those of competing factories that were beginning to spring up around Europe.
Meissen porcelain or Meissen china was the first European hard-paste porcelain. Early experiments were done in 1708 by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus. After his death that October, Johann Friedrich Böttger continued von Tschirnhaus’s work and brought this type of porcelain to the market, financed by Augustus the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony. The production of porcelain in the royal factory at Meissen, near Dresden, started in 1710 and attracted artists and artisans to establish, arguably, the most famous porcelain manufacturer known throughout the world. Its signature logo, the crossed swords, was introduced in 1720 to protect its production; the mark of the swords is reportedly one of the oldest trademarks in existence. In English Dresden porcelain was once the usual term for these wares, especially the figures; this is because Meissen is geographically not far from Dresden which is the Saxon capital.