Eternally Beautiful: Vienna’s Augarten Porcelain Celebrates 300 Years

I am walking along Porzellangasse in Vienna on a hot June day in 2018, looking for a particular plaque. Finally, at house number 51 I spot a simple porcelain tile with a cobalt script that declares it as the site where in 1718 the first porcelain was produced in Vienna.

A few days earlier I had taken a guided tour of an exhibition, called Ewig Schön (Eternally Beautiful) at MAK, the Museum für Angewandte Kunst (Museum of Applied Arts) in Vienna. The Museum held an expansive exhibition of Viennese Porcelain, collected over the period of 300 years of its production. Some 1000 objects were on display, most of them from the Museum’s own collection directly sourced from the manufactory. Only a few items were on loan from other museums or private collections. MAK had the statutory obligation from early on to obtain and secure work from the manufactory. Besides this special commemorative exhibition during that summer, the museum has a permanent exhibition, a porcelain room, called the Dubsky Porcelain Room, on the ground floor.

Although I have seen some of these treasures on previous visits to Vienna, this time the presentation of accompanying information and references made it a much more satisfying experience. It prompted me to revisit 300 years of European history with particular emphasis on the Habsburg Empire and what influence this may have had on the development of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory and what contribution it may have made to the establishment of other manufactories throughout Europe. This article, as brief and cursory as it has to be, endeavours to give the context of the different epochs and how they influenced the development of the Viennese porcelain called Augarten Porzellan.

The Years 1718 – 1744: A secret no longer

The city of Dresden in Saxony, not far from today’s famous porcelain centre of Meissen, was the place of discovery for European hard paste porcelain in 1708. The discoverer was a relatively unknown alchemist by the name of Johann F. Böttger, employed by Augustus the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, to make gold – or else. Böttger of course could not produce the gold and jewels the king demanded but produced another kind of gold – the white gold ‘porcelain’. Augustus admitted to being afflicted with the by acquiring a vast collection of Far East Porcelains. Trying to satisfy his addiction, he nearly bankrupted the State of Saxony. He came to see the discovery of the porcelain by Böttger as the tool to wealth and fame if he had the monopoly on the precious porcelain in Europe. Not surprisingly, everyone involved in the discovery and production of porcelain was bound to utmost