January, 1911 
culture. One of the most enthusiastic of these connoisseurs 
and collectors was August II, King of Saxony and of Po- 
land. He is chronicled as importing these articles from 
the East in fabulous quantities; certain it is, that in his 
castles and palaces, he surrounded himself, regardless of 
expense, with the choicest specimens of the potter’s art. 
It was, indeed, to his interest in ceramics that is due the 
discovery in Europe of the art of making porcelain, and its 
establishment in the Occident on a commercial scale, re- 
cently celebrated as the two hundredth anniversary of the 
foundation of the royal porcelain works at Meissen. With 
the celebration of this establishment of the famous porce- 
lain works, from which the secret was afterwards carried 
to others, it was necessary to celebrate the two hundredth 
anniversary of the perfection or re-invention in Europe 
of the art of making porcelain by Johann Friedrich Boett- 
ger, born in 1682 at Schleiz, Saxony, and bound appren- 
tice in 1696 to Apothecary Zorn, in Berlin. Thus the 
celebration bore a double significance. 
Boettger was by turns pharmacist, alchemist and potter, 
and while the combinations of the three callings may now-a- 
days sound somewhat incongruous, there is really nothing 
remarkable about it when the conditions at that time preva- 
lent in Europe are considered. The pharmacist—apothe- 
cary was his title in those times—was the only person pos- 
sessing the least practical knowledge of drugs and chem- 
icals; the alchemist, regarded as an uncanny individual and 
feared, and ofttimes persecuted as a practitioner of the 
“black arts,’ was constantly dabbling in these materials 
in the hope of discovering the “arcanum,” the philosophers’ 
stone, the elixir of life, or some means of transmitting 
‘ 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 9 
the baser metals into gold, and in the course of his re- 
searches, was in the habit of combining all sorts of ele- 
ments, minerals especially, and accustomed to employ in 
his operations, such high temperatures as the use of the 
retort, crucible and alembic made possible. Bearing in 
mind that his subsequent operations in search of a porce- 
lain composition, were wholly gropings in the dark, and 
that he had no real scientific knowledge of the materials 
he employed, the value of this early experience of Boettger 
will be recognized without difficulty. As an apothecary’s 
apprentice, he established a reputation as a visionary stu- 
dent, a ne’er-do-well dabbler in things outside of his busi- 
ness, and he enhanced it by his boasting of his knowledge 
of the gold making processes. This was brought to the 
ears of the Saxon monarch, who being, thanks to his costly 
art tastes, and for other reasons in an advanced state of 
impecuniosity, conceived the idea that a successful gold- 
maker would be a welcome addition to his establishment. 
About the same time Boettger had decided to transfer the 
scene of his activity to Wittenberg, in the Saxon territory, 
and although the Prussian King objected strenuously to the 
loss of a subject in whom might be vested such important 
possibilities, the subject of our story moved over to Sax- 
ony, a troop of cavalry being sent to guarantee him safe 
conduct, by his new protector. He was installed on his 
arrival in Dresden in the “gold house,” a chemical lab- 
oratory attached to the royal castle in that city and en- 
joined to lose no time in turning out the gold, of which his 
royal master had such urgent need. Here he remained 
from 1701 to 1702, when he was transferred to the castle 
of the sovereign, Prince Anton Egon von Firstenberg, still 
