The Arcanum (6 page)

So Saxony's extravagant ruler became a keen buyer for the most costly porcelain items, sponsoring representatives to buy on
his behalf wherever a large collection came onto the market or a newly arrived ship's cargo was to be auctioned at the dockside.
In the first year of his reign alone he is said to have spent 100,000 thalers on the acquisition of porcelain for the royal
collection. Writing to his general field marshal, Augustus confessed, “It is the same with porcelain as with oranges; if you
have a longing for the one or the other, you will never have enough.” It is little wonder then that Tschirnhaus described
China as “the bleeding bowl of Saxony.”

The Oriental porcelain for which Augustus constantly hungered had been made in the northern regions of China in the Hebei
province since the sixth century. It was not a sudden invention of the kind that Tschirnhaus sought, but the outcome of slowly
evolving methods born from the high-fired white pottery produced in the region.

The West's fascination with imported porcelain had spurred numerous travelers to China to try to find out how this mysterious
substance was made. But the process was a closely guarded secret and the descriptions published in early accounts were often
fundamentally inaccurate and highly misleading. Marco Polo described how “They collect a certain kind of earth, as it were
from a mine, and laying it in a great heap, suffer it to be exposed to the wind, the rain and the sun, for thirty or forty
years, during which time it is never disturbed. By this it became refined and fit for being wrought into the vessels.” Gonzales
de Mendoza, an emissary of Philip II of Spain, came closer to the answer when he found that porcelain was made of “a Chalky
eaerth, which beaten and steeped in water, affoordeth a cream or fatness on the top, and a grosse subsidence at the bottome;
out of the cream or superfluitance, the finest dishes…are made.”

Other writers accounted for porcelains fineness more imaginatively by saying that it was made from shells of lobsters or eggs
pounded into dust or that the clay had to be buried for a century or so. No one from Europe grasped that the secret of making
it was to mix two basic ingredients: kaolin or china clay and a feldspathic rock known as china stone or petuntse, and to
fire them at such a high temperature that the feldspar melted and vitrified, infusing the pores of the clay and creating in
the process microscopically fine crystalline structures known as mullite needles that are unique to porcelain. The Chinese
call the clay the bones and the feldspar the flesh of the porcelain.

The result was a flawless material, far harder than any other known ceramic and through which daylight would penetrate if
you held it to the light. Brilliant and durable, no wonder it looked to Western eyes like shell. The word “porcellane,” first
used by Marco Polo, is derived from the Portuguese term
porcellana,
meaning a pig or a type of vaguely pig-shaped cowrie shell that was used as currency in parts of the Orient.

Tschirnhaus was by no means the first European to try his hand at porcelain-making. There had been numerous earlier attempts
to discover its secret. The Venetians, who, thanks to their trade links with the Far East, had probably seen more early pieces
of porcelain than anyone else in Europe, tried to make it in the sixteenth century, but succeeded only in producing cloudy
glass. In Florence, also in the sixteenth century, the Grand Duke Francesco de Medici had slightly better luck. He assumed,
like the Venetians, that the translucence of porcelain meant that it was in some way similar to glass, and included sand,
glass and powdered rock crystal along with clay to his recipe. The resulting material was fine but a long way from the brilliance
of the real thing. Few pieces survived the firing process and his factory turned out to be little more than an expensive folly.
It closed on his death after only a decade and its rare products had little lasting impact on the development of European
porcelain.

In the meantime superstitions about the magical properties of porcelain abounded. If you drank from a porcelain cup, it was
said, you would be protected both from poisons such as arsenic, aconite and mercury and from heat, since “they [porcelain
cups] will grow hot no higher than the liquor in them ariseth.” But despite the reverence in which it was held, almost a century
was to pass before anyone tried seriously again to make porcelain. Then in the 1660s, in London, John Dwight of Fulham took
out a patent on a porcelain formula—there are no records to show that anything ever came of it, but recently discovered shards
containing mullite suggest that he found limited success. Elsewhere in London the Duke of Buckingham, England's richest man
and the owner of various glass factories, also dabbled in porcelain-making. Two small vases survive at Burghley House and
there is a similar pair in the Royal Collection at Windsor, but again no industry was able to prosper.

In France at around the same time factories were founded in Rouen and St. Cloud near Paris. The St. Cloud porcelain factory,
which Tschirnhaus went to see, fared better. Potters there had formulated a recipe similar to that used in Italy: a combination
of white clay, glass, chalk and lime. The result is now known as “soft paste porcelain” or
pâte tendre,
but though it was semitranslucent and far finer than anything else that had so far been made, it was grayish in tone and
peppered with black flaws; in other words still lacking the perfection of true porcelain.

As part of his investigations Tschirnhaus also went to visit other European pottery centers. He saw the makers of faience
in Nevers in France and delft in Holland. Their pottery was made from a heavy earthenware body covered in a white tin glaze
and painted in patterns derived from the Orient. He observed that even though these objects were often crude imitations of
Chinese art, and heavily potted—nothing like the real thing in fact—the fashion for “chinoiserie” was such that the exotic
designs alone were enough for them to sell as “porcelain.”

Tschirnhaus's studies, coupled with his knowledge of glassmaking and his observation of the porcelain in Augustus's collection,
persuaded him, like the potters in Italy and France, that true porcelain must be a mixture of clay and glass melded together.
On his return to Saxony he began experiments of his own, using his massive burning glasses to melt samples of Saxon clay with
glass to see if in this way he could find the formula.

In his laboratory prison, meanwhile, Böttger kept his word to the king and continued diligently, but with little obvious progress,
to try to find the arcanum for the philosopher's stone.

Augustus, however, was not a man of unlimited forbearance, and when political events in Poland allowed him to return to Dresden
he grew increasingly impatient with Böttger. The war with Sweden was proving disastrous and money to fund it was urgently
needed. By the spring of 1705, more than three years after his arrival in Dresden, the realization finally dawned that Böttger
was no closer to making gold than he had been when he first arrived. Augustus, more incensed than ever with Böttger's endless
lame excuses, forced him to make a definite pledge as to when results would be forthcoming.

By way of response Böttger produced a twenty-two-page document witnessed by von Fürstenberg, Tschirnhaus and von Ohain and
signed by the king. In it he promised to produce quantities of gold within sixteen weeks, and two tons of it within a further
eight days, “with Gods help.” But divine intervention was not forthcoming and the king's hopes were dashed yet again. Should
Böttger now pay the ultimate price for his failed promises and be executed? wondered Augustus. The dilemma was that among
his courtiers such an act might also be interpreted as a sign of his misjudgment in believing and financing the man for so
long.

Fortunately for Böttger, when Augustus's quick temper seemed ready to spill over into something more menacing, Tschirnhaus
was on hand to point to Böttger's profound knowledge of chemistry and his scientific brilliance. Tschirnhaus was growing old,
and his experiments with porcelain-making were still far from successful. Böttger would be the perfect person to continue
this work, as well as continue his research into gold-making.

Perhaps relieved to find there might still be a way of saving face and justifying the enormous expense of keeping Böttger
for so long, the king agreed—porcelain would be a prize every bit as precious as gold. New, larger laboratories and kilns
were deemed to be necessary for such developments and, as space in Dresden's Goldhouse was limited, in September 1705 Böttger,
still a prisoner, was transported to the Albrechtsburg, the royal castle that towers over the quaint medieval town of Meissen,
some fifteen kilometers northwest of Dresden.

The Invention of it is owing to an Alchymist, or one that pretended to be such; who had persuaded a great many People he cou'd
make gold. The King of Poland believ'd it as well as others, and to make sure of his Person, caus'd him to be committed to
the Castle of Königstein three miles from Dresden. There, instead of making gold, that solid precious Metal, which puts Mankind
on committing so many Follies, he invented brittle Porcellane; by which in one sense he made Gold, because the great vend
of that ware brings a great deal of Money into the country.

B
ARON
C
ARL
L
UDWIG VON
P
OELLNITZ,
Memoirs,
1737

T
he Albrechtsburg towers precariously on the rocky slopes of the Burgberg surrounded by river on three sides. Originally a
wooden fortress founded in A.D. 926, the royal
Schloss
at Meissen had been rebuilt by Arnold of Westphalia in the fifteenth century as a princely Renaissance palace with money
earned from recently discovered local silver deposits. Popularly known as the Saxon Acropolis, this is the quintessential
fairy-tale palace, its six mullioned, gargoyled and crocketed stories linked by a fantastical rapierlike exterior staircase
that sprouts improbably from the cathedral courtyard.

To approach the castle one crossed the gateway bridge guarding the entrance to the cathedral courtyard and arrived in a vast
enclosure bordered by the stone walls of the castle, the cathedral itself and a cluster of medieval stone houses. Inside,
Gothic fantasy gave way abruptly to barren solemnity, for the Albrechtsburg in Böttger's time had long been deserted. Almost
as soon as it was built Saxony's rulers had moved camp to Dresden, and during the Thirty Years' War rampaging Swedish soldiers
had laid waste to its exquisite interiors. So Böttger arrived to find Arnold's strikingly romantic palace no more than a shell
concealing grand halls and honeycomb-vaulted chambers of resounding emptiness.

This spartan new home seemed a poor substitute for the comforts Böttger had left behind in Dresden. Thanks to the intervention
of Tschirnhaus, his accommodations had latterly been made as pleasant as the constraints of custody allowed. The rooms he
had occupied had been comfortably appointed, he had been plied with food served on silver dishes—according to one report the
allowance for his table included large quantities of beef, fish, butter, cheese, sweetmeats, eggs and veal—and supplies of
wine, beer and spirits were similarly plentiful. In addition he had been permitted to enjoy strolls in the exquisitely tended
gardens; to sit on cool afternoons in a sun-drenched orangery; even occasionally to visit a small menagerie where he was amused
by the antics of various exotic animals.

As a prisoner in Dresden, Böttger had also been allowed access to his intellectual peers. He was permitted to entertain guests
for dinner and exchange ideas with the leading scientists and philosophers of the Saxon court. Such eminent figures might
have poured scorn on the captive alchemist but instead, following Tschirnhaus's lead, they discussed his ideas with respect.

All in all, the prison Augustus had provided had been one of such beguiling comfort that at times Böttger could almost forget
the desperation that had driven him to escape two years earlier. His arrival at the Albrechtsburg vividly reminded him of
the vulnerability of life as a captive. The king, once again exasperated by the lack of progress, had ceased to consider his
comfort and mental and physical wellbeing a matter of priority. Böttger's uncomfortable confinement was now being used as
a means of ensuring his complete concentration on the task ahead of him.

His only companions at the Albrechtsburg were five assistants appointed by the king, among them two smelters and mineworkers
who became key players in subsequent events: Paul Wildenstein, who kept a fascinating record of progress, and Samuel Stölzel,
later to become one of the most influential employees at Meissen. He was to be supervised by three men: Michael Nehmitz, who
continued to be unsympathetic and hostile; his old ally Pabst von Ohain; and the ebullient court physician Dr. Bartholmäi.
All were to pay regular visits to monitor progress.