Karl Berling Meissen Porcelain Journal — 1900 German Decorative Arts Plates Notebook

For nearly two centuries, the secret of porcelain was one of the most jealously guarded in the world. The Chinese had known how to make it since the Tang dynasty; the Japanese had mastered it in the seventeenth century; but in Europe, despite decades of experiment by alchemists and craftsmen across the continent, the formula remained elusive. When, in 1708, the Saxon alchemist Johann Friedrich Böttger finally cracked it — working in the service of Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony — it was one of the most significant technological achievements of the early eighteenth century. The manufactory that Augustus established at Meissen in 1710 was the first true porcelain manufactory in Europe, and it remained, for most of the eighteenth century, the most prestigious. Karl Berling’s Das Meissner Porzellan, published in 1900 at the bicentenary of that discovery, is a chromolithographic documentation of what two centuries of that history produced: the botanical services, the figure groups, the painted designs that made Meissen synonymous with the highest achievement of European decorative art.

The cover of this journal carries Berling’s plates — the soft pinks and blues of the botanical designs, the precise detail of hand-painted flowers and gilded borders, the decorative vocabulary of Europe’s most celebrated porcelain manufactory rendered in the chromolithographic precision of 1900. It is an image that carries within it two centuries of artistic ambition and technical mastery: the deutsche Blumen of the 1740s, the naturalistic botanical designs that transformed Meissen’s surface decoration from stylised orientalism into something rooted in the European garden and the European natural history tradition.

Product Details

• Format: Hardcover journal
• Pages: 150 lined pages (75 sheets) with perforations for easy removal
• Binding: Casewrap sewn binding — flexible and lay-flat
• Dimensions: 5.75 × 8 inches
• Weight: 100 g
• Cover: Matte laminated full-wrap print
• Illustration: Karl Berling, Das Meissner Porzellan (1900) — chromolithograph
• Meissen manufactory botanical and decorative designs, 1710–1900

Perfect For

• Porcelain collectors and ceramics enthusiasts
• Meissen and German decorative arts lovers
• Art history and design collectors
• Admirers of botanical illustration and hand-painted ceramics
• Antique notes and collection documentation
• A beautiful gift for lovers of European decorative arts

The Story Behind the Plates

The secret of Saxon white gold, Augustus the Strong’s porcelain obsession, and how the deutsche Blumen botanical designs transformed the decorative arts of a continent — read the full story on our blog →