Was There a Western Inventor of Porcelain?

Abstract

Was There a Western Inventor of Porcelain? Martin SchÖnfeld (bio) The Western reinvention of porcelain in the early eighteenth century raises some questions: To what extent was it an independent discovery, and who deserves the credit? In short, was there a Western inventor of porcelain? This article seeks to shed some light on the European acquisition of porcelain-making techniques. I shall argue that this acquisition qualifies as an independent discovery, although it occurred on the basis of a limited transfer of knowledge from China, and that the researcher who deserves the main credit for the European invention of porcelain was not the celebrated Johann Friedrich Böttger (1682–1719) but his largely forgotten mentor and supervisor, Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651–1708). 1 An often repeated story is that Tschirnhaus failed to find the formula for porcelain and that Böttger discovered the arcanum after the death of his master. The available evidence suggests that Tschirnhaus’s contribution is far more significant than commonly assumed and that Böttger took the credit because Tschirnhaus died right after his experimental breakthrough. E. W. von Tschirnhaus (Tschirnhausen) was born on 10 April 1651 in Kieslingswalde, his family’s estate in Saxony, near the present Polish border. He was a natural philosopher and experimenter, with wide-ranging interests. After studying medicine and science at the University of Leyden, he published, among other things, mathematical and technical papers in the Acta Eruditorum. He wrote Medicina Mentis (1687), a philosophical treatise [End Page 716] of some influence that contained a (quite useful) methodology of scientific discovery. He was one of Spinoza’s closest friends, a correspondent of Leibniz, and a teacher of Christian Wolff. In the 1690s, Tschirnhaus turned his lifelong interest in porcelain into a systematic experimental investigation. J. F. Böttger (Böttiger) became Tschirnhaus’s laboratory assistant in 1707. Born on 4 February 1682 in Schleiz (in Thuringia, near the present Czech border), Böttger was a con man and a jailbird with chemical experience and laboratory skills. He had gained some notoriety as an alchemist in Berlin because he had claimed to know how to make gold (a claim that eventually earned him a prison term). Böttger and Tschirnhaus collaborated on the production of ceramics until Tschirnhaus’s death on 11 October 1708. In the spring of the following year, Böttger announced that he had found the formula for porcelain. In 1710, Böttger was appointed the supervisor of the newly constructed Meissen manufactory in Saxony, a position that he held until his death on 13 March 1719. The Meissen manufactory became famous as the first Western factory of true porcelain. The Invention and Features of Porcelain The invention of porcelain, as well as its later reinvention in the West, was not a single achievement but a continuous process involving a series of incremental innovations. The issue is not only who did it—the inventor who truly discovered the relevant techniques in Europe—but also what did it, that is, which of the many innovations were the crucial ones. In the East as well as the West, porcelain developed from stoneware, a hard and brittle ceramic made of clay and fired at about 1,250°C. Between the seventh and tenth centuries, unknown Chinese artisans invented porcelain by replacing the clay with a mixture of ingredients (kaolin, quartz, and feldspar) and firing this mixture at higher temperatures, up to 1,320°C. Two features distinguish porcelain from its common cousin, stoneware. Stoneware clay consists of relatively coarse, hydrated silicates of aluminum that change colors when fired. For example, a gray or brown base color may turn yellowish or reddish. Porcelain clay is a fine-grained white clay that stays white when fired. This “china clay,” or kaolin (after gao ling, the Chinese mountain where it was first found), is one feature distinguishing porcelain from stoneware. Unlike stoneware, which is composed of all fusible materials, the porcelain mass is a mixture of fusible and infusible ingredients. Because of the materials’ different melting points, one ingredient melts in the kiln while the other stays solid. Infusible china clay or kaolin is the “bone” of the porcelain, as the Chinese...