8 AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
HE little town of Meissen, near Dresden, 
was very recently the scene of a unique 
celebration. Founded and fortified in 
928 by Henry I, of Germany, as an out- 
post of the Empire, a bulwark against its 
turbulent Slavonian neighbors, Meissen, 
one of the oldest towns in the kingdom 
of Saxony, is famous for its exquisitely beautiful Gothic 
cathedral, reputed to be the finest place of worship in that 
style of architecture in Germany. But a fame, even more 
world-wide, attaches to a spacious range of buildings, with 
towering chimneys, in which the interest of the votaries of 
the ceramic art have of late centered, for near here, 200 
years, ago, Johann Boettger invented, for Europe, the 
process of making porcelain, and here, in a frowning 
fortress overlooking the Elbe, assigned to him for that 
purpose by the King of Saxony, he instituted and carried 
on for several years the manufacture of the artistic and 
decidedly beautiful ware that has made the old Saxony 
city famous in the art world. The anniversary has just 
been appropriately celebrated in royal and official circles 
and by the people of Saxony in general and Meissen in 
Seinipnecnipitie 
Three exquisite Meissen vases of the Eighteenth Century period 
The Two Hundredth 
Anniversary of the Invention 
of Porcelain by Boettger 
By Charles A. Brassler 
January, IgII 
particular, and many prominent people have journeyed to 
Meissen to participate in the celebration of the two hun- 
dredth year-day of the institution of an art-industry that 
has taken a leading position among the most important 
art interests of Europe. The personage and his discovery, 
which the celebration commemorates, are of sufficient in- 
terest to all ceramists, and those interested in the develop- 
ment of the useful arts, to merit the devotion of a brief 
space in these columns to a story of Boettger, and what he 
accomplished for European pottery. 
Centuries before potters in Europe had any knowledge 
of the manufacture of porcelain, its production and elab- 
oration were practiced as familiar arts in the far East 
and traders to India and China brought back with them, 
specimens of Chinese and Japanese ware, that excited the 
admiration of the European manufacturers of white faience 
and stoneware, and stimulated their emulation. Among 
the wealthy classes, the finer porcelains of the Orient were 
valued, often at their weight in gold, and the accumulation 
of choice specimens, was a “fad” in which the wealthy, 
of artistic tastes, expended fortunes and was indeed one 
of the ways in which they demonstrated their superior 
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