Enfilade

Claudius Innocentius, Du Paquier, Panther Bowl, ca. 1730, glazed, painted, and gilt porcelain, 8 × 25.5 × 10.3 cm
(Vienna: MAK)

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Now on view at Vienna’s MAK:

300 Years of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory
MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Vienna, 16 May — 23 September 2018

Curated by Rainald Franz and Michael Macek

With its wide-ranging jubilee exhibition 300 Years of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory, the MAK is drawing attention to the history and significance of the second-oldest porcelain manufactory in Europe. Founded in May 1718 when the imperial privilege for porcelain production was granted to Claudius Innocentius Du Paquier, the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory set new aesthetic standards over the following decades. Some 1000 objects from the holdings of the MAK as well as national and international collections offer a formidable overview of Viennese developments in the context of Asian precursors and European competitors.

The MAK has housed the legacy of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory—under imperial ownership from 1744 and closed in 1864—and has been dedicated to researching porcelain since its founding years. With examples from all eras of production, the legacy provides an overview of some 150 years of porcelain production in Vienna. Viennese porcelain production covered a wide spectrum of ceramics: from dinnerware sets and vases to clocks, from high-quality porcelain sculptures to scenic and floral miniatures, from porcelain paintings with cobalt blue and gold decorations in relief to large-format porcelain pictures with floral still lifes.

The exhibition 300 Years of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory presents the latest research findings with as yet unpublished documents on major works by the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory, such as the porcelain room from the Palais Dubsky in Brno (ca. 1740) and the centerpiece from Zwettl Abbey (Vienna, 1767/68). Both the ‘Dubsky Room’, one of the first rooms to be decorated with European porcelain, and the centerpiece from Zwettl Abbey are on permanent display in the MAK Permanent Collection Baroque Rococo Classicism, designed by Donald Judd.

The catalogue is distributed by ACC Art Books:

Christoph Thun-Hohenstein and Rainald Franz, eds., 300 Jahre Wiener Porzellan / 300 Years of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory (Stuttgart, Arnoldsche Art Publishers 2018), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-3897905306, 48€ / $85.

With contributions by Rainald Franz, Andreas Gamerith, Michael Macek, Errol Manners, Waltraud Neuwirth, Kathrin Pokorny-Nagel, A. Philipp Revertera, Elisabeth Schmuttermeier, Ulrike Scholda, Leonhard Weidinger and Johannes Wieninger and a foreword by Christoph Thun-Hohenstein.

C O N T E N T S

• Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Viennese Porcelain as a Resonance
• Rainald Franz, Three Centuries of Viennese Porcelain and Three Centennials
• Rainald Franz and Michael Macek, The Dubsky Chamber and the MAK: An 18th-Century Aristocratic Porcelain Room and its History
• Andreas Gamerith, At a Loss for Words: The Zwettl Centerpiece and its Origins
• Rainald Franz, The Viennese Porcelain Set for the Duke of Wellington
• Errol Manners, The Travels of an Arcanist, Joseph Jakob Ringler
• Johannes Wieninger, Exemplars from East Asia
• Elisabeth Schmuttermeier, Porcelain versus Silver
• Michael Macek, The Hülfswerk von Engelhardtszell 1798–1809 and its Impact beyond 1809
• Waltraud Neuwirth, Johann Poysel, First Modelleur of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory: His 1858 Journey to Limoges, Paris, Sèvres, Wallerfangen, and Nymphenburg
• Kathrin Pokorny-Nagel and Ulrike Scholda, The Museum as the Administrator of an Estate: The Closure of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory and Transfer of Its Holdings to the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry
• Leonhard Weidinger, The Viennese Porcelain Scene: The Museum and Private Collections
• Rainald Franz, Paul Wittgenstein’s Porcelain Room
• A. Philipp Revertera, Etcetera: Random Thoughts on Collecting (and) Viennese Porcelain
• Rainald Franz and Michael Macek, History of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory 1718–1864 in its Cultural and Political Context

A Visual History of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory
Claudius Innocentius Du Paquier, 1718–1744
Imperial Porcelain Manufactory Phase 1, 1744–1749
Imperial Porcelain Manufactory Phase 2, 1750–1783
Conrad Sörgel von Sorgenthal, 1784–1805
Matthias Niedermayer, 1805–1827
Benjamin von Scholz, 1827–1833
Andreas Baumgartner, 1833–1842
Franz von Leithner, 1842–1855
Alexander Löwe, 1856–1862
Alois Auer von Welsbach, 1862–1864
Augarten Porcelain Manufactory, since 1923–24

Now on view at the Augarten Porcelain Museum in Vienna:

Eternally Beautiful: 300 Years of Vienna Porcelain, 1718–2018
Augarten Porcelain Museum, Vienna, 20 March — 13 October 2018

The central theme of the Augarten Porcelain Museum’s jubilee exhibition is the dialogue between the designers and the users of Vienna porcelain since 1718. Select exhibits from the hands and minds of innovative artists and designers from the various eras enter into dialogue with their respective cultural context, distinctive creative styles thus being paired with their era’s distinctive mood. The historical spectrum ranges from astounding miracles of Baroque craftsmanship to light-hearted Rococo objets d’art, from the golden glory of Neoclassical porcelain through the simplicity of Biedermeier to the allusive reminiscences of Historicism, and then continues up to the present day via the delicate creations of Art Déco, the bright colours of the 1950s and the fascinating world of modern design.

In all the most important phases of the Vienna porcelain manufactory first founded by Claudius Innocentius du Paquier in 1718, production has been characterized by an interplay between the vision of the porcelain-makers and the actual lifestyle of the porcelain-users. Conrad von Sorgenthal (1733–1805), the most successful director of the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory, sent staff out as ‘lifestyle scouts’ to sound out the habits, fashions, special preferences and opinions of his customers, so that the findings could then be reflected in the design process. When the Augarten manufactory was founded in 1923 as the successor to the imperial works, it strove to achieve a similar closeness to contemporary lifestyle. The craft of fine porcelain was enriched with significant formal and emotional input not only from designers of the Wiener Werkstätte and but also from a host of excellently trained graduates from the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts. By putting innovative creations from three centuries under the spotlight, the exhibition is intended to stimulate fresh debate and generate a new discourse. As part of the presentation, the Museum has invited the designers currently cooperating with the Augarten manufactory to take part in designing the present-day exhibition space.

Claudia Lehner-Jobst, Ewig Schön: 300 Jahre Wiener Porzellan (Vienna: Residenz Verlag, 2018), 192 pages, ISBN: 9783701734498, 35€.