The arcanum, p.10
The Arcanum, page 10
On this note he unofficially relinquished the running of the factory, calling on Steinbrück, who was forced to abandon his job as a supervisor at Meissen, to come to Dresden to look after the work there. Böttger, meanwhile, locked himself in his laboratory, immersing himself in his experiments with colors, and returning once again to his quest for gold.
Genius, it is said, is only a greater aptitude for patience. In Böttger's case the tenacious genius that had fueled his early discoveries began gradually to elude him. The search for gold and for a formula for under-glaze blue continued fitfully, and in the latter case probably because of his ill health, unsuccessfully.
Inspiration, though, had not totally deserted him, and he achieved modest success with enamel colors and gilding. In between sporadic bouts of illness he managed to produce a formula for fired gilding, which was far more hard-wearing and lustrous than the cold-painted variety used on early wares. He discovered ways of creating silver-fired decoration as well as developing a wonderfully rich pink luster that could be used to paint monochrome decorations or to adorn the inner surfaces of cups and tea bowls. He developed formulas for one or two rather dull-colored enamels, including a deep green and dark red, but these must still have seemed far from the brilliant clarity of tone for which he strove.
In other areas too Böttger had made technological advances. Turning his attentions to glassmaking, he had improved a recipe for ruby glass, also considered a much coveted rarity, first developed by Kunckel in the seventeenth century. The ruby glass made by Böttger incorporated powdered gold and its color only emerged as the mixture of glass and gold was exposed to heat. It seems likely therefore that the exquisite ruby vases that Augustus proudly displayed in his treasury were a by-product of research into enameling.
But still no successful recipe for underglaze blue had been found. Augustus had grown markedly more impatient at this failure since his addition of the most precious items yet to his collection of Oriental porcelain.
On visits to the Prussian palace of Charlottenburg Augustus had noted and deeply envied the priceless collection of porcelain vases acquired by the Prussian King Frederick I. But Frederick died in 1713 and his successor, Frederick William I, was a puritanical and militaristic leader, far more interested in collecting soldiers than in collecting china; under his rule the Prussian army was to double in size to a deadly force of 83,000 men. Augustus, seeing an opportunity, therefore dispatched his agents to see if Frederick William would sell the collection. After lengthy negotiations a deal was struck. Augustus would get the vases along with over a hundred other pieces of porcelain in return for payment to Frederick William of six hundred dragoons from the mounted regiments of the Saxon army. The soldiers, regarded as little better than chattels, had no say in the matter.
Thus on April 19, 1717, a regiment of six hundred men from Poland, Russia, Bohemia and Silesia who had been enlisted in Augustus's army were the bargaining chips handed over to officials at Jüterbog. Saxon officials then proceeded to Charlottenburg, where the eighteen monumental vases, together with seven smaller covered vases, five beakers, twenty colored plates, thirty-seven large bowls, sixteen blue and white plates, and sundry blue and white dishes—151 pieces in all—were carefully packed and sent to Dresden, where they were impatiently awaited by the king. The dragoon vases, and much of the rest of the collection, remain in Dresden to this day.
The king's delight in this porcelain conquest heightened his disappointment in Böttger, for the dragoon vases were adorned with consummate perfection in dazzling underglaze blue. Meissen, despite Böttger's promises, could not hold a candle to such skill.
Sensing the king's dissatisfaction and feeling once again mortified at his failure, Böttger wrote to him in an attempt to explain the difficulties and beg for his patience: “Who knows how long India [he meant China] manufactured porcelain before they were able to deliver those beautiful pieces to Your Majesty.”
Augustus's response was to offer a reward of 1,000 thalers to anyone who could discover the successful recipe for underglaze blue. Other workers, attracted by the promise of such a prize, joined in the chase. Among them were Samuel Stölzel and David Köhler, both of whom had been among the first workers to join Böttger at the Meissen laboratory in 1705.
Köhler had by now risen to be an obsessively secretive but talented compounder. His refusal to collaborate with Stölzel slowed down the overall progress in the quest for underglaze blue decoration. Nonetheless, his dedication to the task in hand was the first to pay dividends. In 1717, Köhler managed to fire a piece decorated with a blue pigment that remained stable during firing. But rather than heralding imminent success, this seems to have been something of a lucky fluke. Either he had difficulty in reproducing the blue more than once or he remained unsatisfied with it, but at any rate he did not submit his claim for the prize for another two years, by which time Stölzel claimed that he too had played a part in the discovery and was also due a share of the reward.
True to form, Augustus was reluctant, when confronted with this inconvenient reminder of a pledge, to part with the cash. The dispute between the two men provided him with the ideal excuse for wriggling out of his agreement. Disregarding his earlier offer, he promised that if both men would share their knowledge with each other and continue to develop their work a “just reward” would be theirs. The idea of collaboration was anathema to the taciturn Köhler and neither of them ever received the promised 1,000 thalers.
The spectacle of others' misfortunes has always been a compelling attraction for opportunists. As Böttger's health became increasingly fragile, the promise of easy pickings attracted the unscrupulous to his side. Among the most menacing of these insidious characters were Johann Georg Mehlhorn and Gottfried Meerheim, two so-called friends of Böttger's who inveigled their way into his inner circle and enticed him to trust them, only to betray his confidence at the first opportunity.
A trained cabinetmaker, Mehlhorn turned his back on marquetry, inlays and dovetails when he realized that porcelain promised to provide him with a far more lucrative trade. Though unable to either read or write, he was obviously a highly accomplished confidence trickster who managed to convince Böttger that he was an expert decorator and thus able to solve the underglaze blue problem. In response Böttger shared with Mehlhorn his discoveries so far. Too late the realization finally dawned on Böttger that Mehlhorn was not contributing anything to these discussions and had no real knowledge of his own. By that time the damage was done. Mehlhorn had discovered enough to pretend that Böttger, while drunk, had given away vital secrets about the manufacture of porcelain. The directorate were, as Mehlhorn had intended, terrified that such information might be sold to a rival, and he managed to wheedle a job as vice-inspector for himself in the factory, with a salary of 300 thalers a year. Eventually Mehlhorn's duplicity found the perfect employment when he was sent to spy on Samuel Kempe, the defector who had set up a rival stoneware factory in Prussia.
Meerheim was a similarly unprincipled fraudster. He described himself as a metallurgist and also began working with Böttger on the quest for underglaze blue. Somehow Meerheim engendered such faith in Böttger that he recommended him as his successor, but the two soon quarreled and parted company. By then, however, Meerheim, despite being “all hot air and talk,” was able to persuade the Meissen commission that he too knew enough to damage the factory and thus he was also able to extort a handsome salary for the next decade.
Meanwhile, despite the disappointments and difficulties, Augustus continued to champion his factory's showpiece products, using them as regal gifts to underline his country's, and thus his own, technological and artistic preeminence. But the more Augustus sounded the trumpet of his porcelain success story, the more his political rivals throughout Europe became determined to pierce his conceit and share in the potential for lucrative financial reward. First, though, they had to discover the secret for themselves.
Thus Meissen's monopoly on the manufacture of true European porcelain was increasingly threatened by a deluge of secret agents and confidence tricksters. The problem of keeping the arcanum safe had never been more pressing, particularly in light of Böttger's ill health.
The dilemma, as everyone agreed, was that in order for the factory's future to be assured Böttger clearly had to tell others how porcelain was made, but with whom and how should such information be shared? Any single individual entrusted with such knowledge would inevitably become a target for the spies who were flocking to Meissen in ever-increasing numbers.
The arcanum involved knowledge not just of the composition of the paste, but also of the method of firing, the makeup of the glazes and the recipes for the enamels. Obviously the safest way to ensure that these secrets were secure was by sharing them among several trusted employees. Each would be taught part of the formula and no one, apart from Böttger himself, would fully understand, or be able to replicate, the entire process.
Böttger first divulged the secrets of his discovery to two men, who were dubbed “arcanists,” in 1711. They were Dr. Wilhelm Nehmitz, a chemist and brother of Böttger's enemy Michael Nehmitz, and Dr. Jacob Bartholmäi. Wilhelm Nehmitz was briefed on how the glaze for the porcelain was made, while Bartholmäi, who had long been privy to many of the secrets of Böttger's invention, was officially instructed on how to make the paste. He became adept himself at making porcelain, writing proudly: “In the first year, 1708, I acquired such skill… that the pieces made by myself could well be offered for sale.”
Despite Böttger's assurances that “These are my men, who know how everything is done. I don't hold back anything,” Augustus remained terrified that Böttger would deliberately withhold some vital detail in order to safeguard his own position, or that a spy would somehow manage to steal any written notes. To avoid such an eventuality Bartholmäi was instructed to “transpose everything that Böttger gives him into characters that nobody will be able to decipher.”
But the poor working conditions and the sporadic payment of wages to workers remained largely unresolved, and their dissatisfaction, coupled with the continual presence of infiltrators eager to lure the Meissen staff away, fueled continual breaches in security. In 1718, Peter Eggebrecht, the leaseholder of the Dresden faience factory, was lured to Russia by Peter the Great to set up a porcelain factory in the style of Meissen. Nothing came of this attempt, presumably because Eggebrecht did not know enough about porcelain-making, and Peter then sent a Russian spy to Meissen. He too failed to find the arcanum and returned empty-handed.
Much more serious was the defection in 1717 of Christoph Konrad Hunger, a skilled Meissen enameler and gilder, lured to Vienna by the Austrian war commissioner Claudius du Paquier, who was eager to start a rival porcelain factory. With his knowledge of the properties of gold, Hunger had managed to win Böttger's confidence and he too claimed that Böttger's indiscretions when drunk had given him access to knowledge of the arcanum. When du Paquier made him the lucrative offer of a handsome salary plus the opportunity of becoming a partner in a porcelain factory, it was clearly too tempting to turn down.
But as with so many of the other defectors, Hunger's claims to know how to make porcelain were proved false when his attempts at successful firing continually failed. Hunger knew that the problems lay both with the clay used for the paste and in the design of the kilns, but he could not find the correct solution. If he could tempt other Meissen workers with knowledge of the correct composition and firing techniques to join forces with him these difficulties could be overcome.
Hunger got in touch with the duplicitous Mehlhorn, offering him a share of profits plus 100 thalers to cover the cost of the move to Vienna if he would collaborate in the new factory. Mehlhorn responded encouragingly at first, but when the money arrived, perhaps bearing in mind the limitations of his knowledge and the fact that he was already well provided for by the Meissen directorate, he pocketed the travel expenses and stayed in Meissen. For the time being, at least, success eluded Vienna.
Part Two
The Rivals
Chapter One
Shadows of Death
O cursed lust of gold! When for thy sake,
The fool throws up his interest in both worlds;
First starved in this, then damned in that to come.
ROBERT BLAIR, The Grave, 1743
Bouts of insanity, agonizing illness and forlorn experimentation punctuated the last sad year of Böttger's life. The king, unable to relinquish his hopes that Böttger might yet make gold, still goaded him into pursuing his hopeless dream. In response the increasingly frail Böttger, desperate to prove himself finally to Augustus, dabbled frenziedly with his mysterious liquids, powders and tinctures in his dimly lit laboratories. Long after it was clear to all who knew him that his mind was incapable of the analytical genius that had led him to his first great discoveries, he remained pathetically fearful of spies and scrawled down the results of his last bizarre trials in meandering, illegible jargon that only he could decipher.
The futile and obsessive search continued until, finally, too weak even to leave his bedchamber, Böttger was forced to accept that the arcanum for gold would never be his to present to the king. As the new year of 1719 dawned, the thirty-seven-year-old Böttger's descent into final illness, a raging form of consumptive fever, was witnessed by the loyal Steinbrück, who visited him every day. In early March the epileptic spasms and cramps returned and were treated, at first successfully, with snake venom. A week later even this treatment failed.
On March 13, 1719, at about six in the evening, as the setting sun shimmered over the rippling waters of the Elbe, Böttger, the inventor of European porcelain, finally breathed his last, after coughing and writhing in agony for nine hours. He was buried ten days later in a quiet ceremony in Dresden's Alter Johannisfriedhof cemetery. Only a handful of mourners attended. The king, whose treatment of Böttger had led him to his early grave, was not among them. The cemetery along with Böttger's grave has since been replaced with the Dresden town hall and a park.
For the last five years of his life Böttger had officially been a free man, but the grip of Augustus and Meissen extended inexorably beyond the grave. As soon as the body had been removed from his apartments, the rooms were sealed up until the papers and notebooks with which they were littered could be removed for safekeeping by Augustus's officials. The Meissen authorities presumed that among Böttger's belongings they would discover notes relating to the latest developments in the manufacture of porcelain, glazes and enamels. In fact, after careful examination of the documents, virtually nothing of use was discovered. Böttger's porcelain-making genius had, in effect, died along with him. It was, ironically, largely thanks to his indiscretions that the secrets of his later discoveries were passed on at all.
The full extent of Böttger's financial problems became clear only after his death. His debts, which included those he had incurred as the factory's administrator, amounted to over 20,000 thalers; his assets came to a paltry 700 thalers. Augustus's promise to settle Böttger's debts incurred on behalf of the factory had long been conveniently forgotten, and Böttger's modest and erratically paid salary, when set against his appetite for luxurious living, had been hopelessly inadequate to cover the enormous sums still outstanding. Valuables were either pawned or entailed; even his extravagant furniture and the silver plates from which he grandly dined were rented or unpaid for.
The ingenious inventor who had been deprived of his liberty and forced to devote virtually his entire working career to a discovery that was poised to bring Augustus gold and prestige beyond his wildest expectations was found, in the final reckoning, to be penniless.
We do not know how Augustus responded when he heard the news of Böttger's death, but to judge from letters and reports it seems certain that over the years of frustration and achievement he had developed a genuine if sporadic affection for his brilliant arcanist.
As the king came slowly to terms with Böttger's loss and brooded over the problem of who would carry the factory forward into the future, he was also troubled by the worrying news from Meissen. Key staff were being lured to Vienna, where the events that would solve his most pressing problem—finding a successor to Böttger—were already unfolding in the Austrian capital.
Like Dresden, Vienna was a city rapidly expanding in response to its Hapsburg ruler's military and political successes. Since Austria had emerged triumphant from the Turkish Wars the city had been transformed from a dingy, unremarkable metropolis into one boasting ravishing Baroque palaces, glorious music, sophisticated theater and opera—and a society with an increasing appetite for luxury of every type. Thomas Nugent, an eighteenth-century British traveler, wrote glowingly of its charms: “There is no place in the world where people live more luxuriously than at Vienna. Their chief diversion is feasting and carousing, on which occasions they are extremely well served with wine and eatables. People of fortune will have eighteen or twenty sorts of wines at their tables, and a note is laid on every plate mentioning every sort of wine that may be called for. Especially on court days one sees the greatest profusion and extravagance in this kind of pageantry, the servants being ready to sink under the weight of their liveries, bedawbed all over with gold and silver.”
This was the city in which Claudius Innocentius du Paquier, a court official of Dutch origin, decided to try his luck at porcelain-making.
Du Paquier's French name, volatile Latin temperament and entrepreneurial and creative inclinations may reflect Huguenot origins, but though little is known of his family's background he was certainly a man of intellect, unbridled enthusiasm, steely determination and a keen eye for opportunity.
In common with Augustus the Strong and most other central European rulers, Emperor Charles VI of Austria espoused a mercantile policy modeled on that of France. New commercial ventures were offered advantageous terms for setting up in the Austrian capital, and doubtless part of the reason for du Paquier's interest in porcelain was his hope that such an enterprise would attract royal patronage. In such refined, moneyed surroundings there was clearly, he must have reasoned, a ready market for new luxury products. As a court official he was au fait with all the significant commercial developments of central Europe, and having remarked the announcement of Meissen's discovery of porcelain a decade earlier he decided that here was a golden opportunity. Porcelain was the white gold for which all of Europe cried out, which only Meissen had, as yet, discovered. If he could found a porcelain factory in Vienna, there was no reason why it could not quickly outstrip the faltering progress of Meissen. Such a feat would not only make all concerned incredibly rich, it would also reinforce Austrian superiority in Europe. But it all depended on discovering the arcanum.
