The Arcanum (29 page)

The resurrection of the Vienna works had not gone unnoticed in Dresden. Ever since du Paquier had rebuilt his factory, concerns
had been voiced about the threat he posed. But what could be done about it? The officials in Meissen might be able to take
steps to assure the security of the arcanum in their factory, but in Vienna they were powerless to do any more than watch
events unfold.

Christian Anacker, the Saxon ambassador at the Austrian court, who had played a key role in encouraging Stölzel to return
to Meissen, was instructed to keep a close eye on the progress of the factory. His reports hinted at a degree of disorganization
that was in stark contrast with the tight ship run at Meissen since Böttger's demise. Every letter he dispatched fueled fears
that the safety of the arcanum was in serious jeopardy.

Money, a problem from the early days of du Paquier's venture, was never easy. For much of its early life the factory was fraught
with worries over mounting debts and a chronic inability to pay staff, who quickly became disgruntled. Soon after Stölzel
had repented and returned to Meissen, Christoph Konrad Hunger, Stölzel's co-founder of the factory, became similarly disenchanted.
But Hunger had an altogether different temperament from that of the vulnerable and guilt-torn Stölzel. A hard-bitten and devious
profiteer, he was willing to make money in whatever way presented itself. Loyalty and integrity were low on his list of priorities;
he would happily stoop to intimidation, threats and all manner of chicanery if it would help to fill his purse.

According to Anacker, Hunger's craving for money led him to tarnish his reputation so severely in various shady financial
deals in Vienna that he had little alternative but to follow Stölzel's example and run away. In his case the chosen route
was not straight back to Meissen but to Italy, where he joined forces with the brothers Francesco and Giuseppe Vezzi, goldsmiths
and would-be porcelain manufacturers of Venice, convincing them that he knew the secret of the arcanum.

Hunger was no arcanist, but he knew enough after working with Stölzel to realize that the right type of clay was critical
to production. With his contacts in Saxony he managed to persuade the unscrupulous mine owner Schnorr to supply the Vezzi
brothers with a consignment of kaolin. This was an outright breach of Saxon law, since Schnorr had agreed to give Meissen
exclusive rights to his clay, but Schnorr, an inveterate wheeler-dealer, could not bear to turn away good business. He promised
to get the consignment over the border to Italy without detection.

Two years after the clay arrived, with Hunger's assistance the Vezzi factory managed to establish production of porcelain.
Hunger, however, quickly grew weary of life on the Venetian canals and hankered to return to Saxony. He wrote an apologetic
letter to the authorities in Meissen in which he attempted to exonerate himself from any blame for the theft of the arcanum.

Meissen must have viewed his audacious request for work with astonishment, but rather than leaving him free to wander Europe
and help hatch further factories it seemed more expedient to take him back into the fold. Thus he was given leave to return
to Meissen and offered work as a gilder.

But this occupation was not enough to satisfy Hungers still voracious ambitions. Three years later he decided to leave Saxony
again and offer his now considerable expertise to the highest bidder. Without permission he deserted the factory, traveling
first to Stockholm, then to Copenhagen, then back to Vienna and finally to St. Petersburg. In all these cities he tried, with
little success, to make porcelain.

Throughout his escapades Hunger remained unabashedly defiant of Meissen officaldom. Writing at one stage for leave to return
to Saxony after his unauthorized defection, he threatened that, if his demands were not met, “I will not only manufacture
porcelain here in Sweden but through the book which I shall have published, I shall render the science of porcelain a matter
of such common knowledge, that not only will many other noble persons undertake its production, but every potter will be able
to copy it.”

If threats like these seemed to echo Meissen's worst nightmares, they had not yet imagined the havoc to be wrought by another
roaming arcanist from Vienna, one Joseph Jakob Ringler.

In Vienna the Saxon ambassador reported that disarray still ruled and finances were far from improved. By 1744 things had
become so bad that even du Paquier had grown tired of the constant financial problems and decided to sell out to the state.
Maria Theresa of Austria now became the factory's official sponsor, and with the much needed new investment more workers could
at last be employed.

Among the new apprentices was the fourteen-year-old son of a local schoolteacher by the name of Joseph Jakob Ringler. The
young apprentice was outgoing, extremely intelligent and, it later emerged, unusually observant. He made rapid progress as
a porcelain decorator, but also became so popular with co-workers specializing in other areas of production that they happily
shared their expertise with him.

While Ringler was steadily accumulating a formidable knowledge of porcelain-making, the factory was at last enjoying a period
of prosperity. With royal patronage Viennese porcelain had become the essential adornment for every fashionable breakfast
table and boudoir, and as demand grew the business expanded to employ around two hundred workers.

But the problems brought about by an overly lax administration were still far from solved. Pilfering of the porcelain was
rife. Everyone recognized that the workers were taking wares home “in the white,” decorating them privately and selling them
on the sly, but still no effective security measures were introduced. In the workshop itself the scene was equally chaotic.
Wives and girlfriends were reported to congregate in the workshop drinking and gossiping with their partners and preventing
the smooth progress of work, and much more porcelain was lost in the general confusion.

The chaotic ambience must have helped the ambitious and sharp-eyed Ringler to gain access to even the most secret parts of
the manufacturing process, but once he had enjoyed the carefree atmosphere and learned all he could, the allure of the place
began to pall. Enterprising and ambitious, he had always yearned for travel and adventure and he became increasingly impatient
to put his expertise to the test. The whole of Europe was crying out for porcelain; he was not going to spend the rest of
his life as a mere decorator—his intention was to direct a factory of his own.

By 1747 Ringler had matured into a young man of seductive and apparently irresistible sexual attraction. Among his many female
conquests was the impressionable young daughter of the Vienna factory's director. She became so completely besotted by the
young Ringler that, so the story goes, he managed to persuade her to steal from her father's desk the secret arcanum for porcelain
and, equally important, a design for a porcelain kiln. With these precious documents he now had all that was needed to make
porcelain anywhere he chose, for whoever would pay. At the age of seventeen this was an astonishingly powerful position in
which to find himself.

Soon after the lovelorn young director's daughter had passed the secret documents to Ringler she awoke, in the manner of all
tragic heroines, to find her lover gone. Ringler had packed a large black bag and deserted her to embark on the precarious
and uncertain career of a wandering arcanist. It was the life of danger, adventure and travel he had always craved.

He went first to Künersberg in Bavaria, where he managed to produce one or two rare pieces of porcelain. A year later he was
in Höchst, the factory near Mainz where a year earlier the renegade Adam von Löwenfinck had encountered such unsurmountable
problems that he had been forced to leave and seek work in Strasbourg. Since Löwenfinck's departure, a new arcanist, Johann
Benckgraff, had been taken on, but he too was encountering difficulties. Benckgraff was some ten years older than the dashing
young Ringler, but the two had already met and worked alongside one another in Vienna. Within two years of Ringler's arrival
porcelain production was under way and Benckgraff knew nearly as much about its manufacture as the talented Ringler. Both
now embarked on separate journeys through Europe's ceramic centers, leaving a trail of nascent porcelain factories in their
wake.

Ringler followed Löwenfinck's trail to France's easternmost border with Germany and the city of Strasbourg. Löwenfinck was
busy refining painting techniques on faience there, but Ringler was able to show the factory owner, Paul Hannong, how to make
porcelain. The factory's output was soon good enough to compete with Louis XV's royal manufactory at Vincennes and Louis became
so worried by Strasbourg's progress that he announced by royal decree that no factory other than his own was allowed to produce
multicolored porcelain. Forced to close, Hannong moved his factory outside the jurisdiction of France to the Palatinate of
Frankenthal, where he was given exclusive rights to produce porcelain in the region.

Ringler meanwhile moved on, finding a niche for himself nearby at Neudeck. This factory belonged to the Elector Max Joseph
III, who had married Maria Anna Sophia, one of Augustus the Strong's granddaughters. Like her grandfather, Maria Anna Sophia
was a porcelain fanatic. She longed to encrust her royal palace with porcelain in an echo of Augustus's Japanese Palace and
persuaded her new husband to become involved in a porcelain venture. With Ringler in their employ the royal couple were soon
able to realize their dream. The factory later moved to a nearby building at Nymphenburg, where it remains in production today.

Meanwhile, hearing of Ringler's reputation as a brilliant arcanist, Duke Karl Eugen of Württemberg summoned him to Ludwigsburg
in southwest Germany. A porcelain factory, the duke decreed by royal proclamation, was a “necessary attribute of splendour
and dignity.” Ringler was able to provide this necessary attribute with consummate ease, and his Ludwigsburg porcelain factory
was founded in 1759. So pleased was the duke with Ringler's progress that within a month of his arrival he was appointed director.
Having realized his ambition of running his own factory, Ringler at last settled down and remained there until his death in
1802.

In Berlin, after his withdrawal from Saxony in 1763, Frederick the Great was not to be without his own porcelain for long.
In the same year he made peace with Europe, he bought a porcelain factory that had been started two years earlier by an entrepreneurial
financier by the name of Gotzkowsky, who now found himself in financial distress. Gotzkowsky had bought the secret arcanum
from an associate of Benckgraff's. Frederick still had at his disposal a cache of highly skilled Meissen craftsmen whom he
had forced to come to Berlin during the war. They were now refused leave to return, and the success of Frederick's venture
was at last assured.

While throughout Europe havoc was thus wrought on the security of the arcanum, a momentous upheaval was also afoot in Meissen.
Once all possibility of danger from Prussia was safely past, Herold had returned from his life of comfortable exile in Frankfurt.
The first thing he did on his return was submit a hefty bill of 8,200 thalers for the expenses he had incurred during his
exile in addition to the salary he had already received. By now an old man of sixty-six, he still officially held the title
of inspector of the factory, but in practice his authority was now negligible and he was furious to find how effortlessly
Kaendler had stepped into his shoes and managed to steer the factory through the traumatic events of the war. A report of
a meeting held a year after his return reveals the extent of his animosity; he is recorded as grumbling about “the laxity,
the negligence, and the dishonesty of most of the officials, among whom he specially mentioned the court commissioner, Kaendler.”

But Herold's days of power and influence had passed, and since a new supervisor of the painting department had been brought
in his complaints were largely ignored. Two years later, unable to tolerate working under someone else's rule and following
the death of his wife, he requested permission to leave his rooms in the Albrechtsburg and live quietly in retirement. The
large country estate at nearby Plossen, bought by his wife in 1741, was sold, and Herold moved back to Meissen where he bought
a spacious house on the corner of Fleischergasse (the building is still standing). Before he was allowed to leave Meissen's
employ, he was forced to agree never to leave Saxony and ordered to write an account of his entire knowledge of the arcanum
and color compoundings and to hand it over to the authorities. Herold's hostility to Kaendler had, finally, ceased to be a
threat.

But for Kaendler the reprieve came too late. His fortune too was in decline. The furious battles that had raged within Europe
had not been able to hold back the tide of changing fashion. Kaendler's Rococo shepherdesses and amorous courtiers now seemed
as passé as Herold's chinoiseries once had done. A new look, noble and simple Neoclassicism, had taken over.

Meissen's failure to move with the times in the aftermath of war resulted in a slump in profits. Realizing that survival depended
on its ability to keep pace with new artistic developments, the commissioners frantically looked to France, where the new
style had first taken hold, for inspiration. A young Parisian modeler by the name of Michael Victor Acier was found and lured
to Meissen with the promise of a generous salary (50 percent more than Meissen had expected to pay), a free house and the
same title as Kaendler—that of modeler-in-chief.

Shattered by his experiences of Prussian occupation, wounded by the accusations of cooperation with the enemy that had been
leveled against him since their withdrawal, and above all embittered by the failure of his long and obsessive quest to make
the massive equestrian statue—for which he had still not been fully reimbursed—Kaendler now had to suffer the further ignominy
of having his opinions and past achievements brushed aside. Acier, thirty years his junior, represented new ideas and new
hope for the dying factory and orders were given straight to him. Kaendler was completely cold-shouldered.