Böttger, Johann Friedrich

SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors

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b. 4 February 1682 Scheiz, Germany

d. 13 March 1719 Dresden, Germany

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German inventor of Meissen porcelain.

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After the early death of his father, Böttger spent his childhood in Magdeburg, where he received instruction in mathematics, fortification and pyrotechnics. He spent twelve years with the apothecary F.Zorn in Berlin, where there was a flourishing colony of alchemists. Böttger became an adept himself and claimed to have achieved transmutations into gold by 1701.

In March 1702 Böttger moved near to Dresden, in the service of August II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. While there, he made friends with E.W.von Tschirnhaus (1651–1708), scientist and possessor of glass-and ironworks. It was this association that led eventually to the founding of the celebrated Meissen porcelain factory. By 1708, Böttger had succeeded in making fine red stoneware by adding a flux, alabaster or marble, to infusible Saxony clay. By varying his raw materials, and in particular in using white china clay from the Erzgebirge, he obtained the first European true, hard, white porcelain, which had eluded European workers for centuries. At the same time he improved the furnace to achieve a temperature of around 1,350°C. To exploit his discovery, the Meissen factory was set up in 1710 and its products began to be marketed in 1713. Böttger managed the factory until his death in 1719, although throughout the period of experimentation and exploitation he had worked in conditions of great secrecy, in a vain attempt to preserve the secret of the process.

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Further Reading

C.A.Engelhardt, 1837, J.F.Böttger: Erfinder des sachsischen Porzellan, Leipzig; reprinted 1982, Verlag Weidlich (the classic biography).

K.Hoffman, 1985, Johann Friedrich Böttger: von Alchemistengold zum weissen

Porzellan, Berlin: Verlag Neues Leben.

LRD