Four skilfully placed brush strokes produce four fine lines in mud grey. Sabine Wencker decorates each piece of porcelain with the greatest of care. Although she is not painting blossoms, flourishes or elaborate Ming dragons, it is the four discreet marks she adds to the bottom of every cup, plate and bowl that makes them valuable. They guarantee their authenticity and prove their heritage as works from Europe’s first porcelain manufactory. The glaze and the heat of the kiln at 1,400 degrees Celsius transforms the grey lines into shining cobolt blue – into the crossed swords of the Meissen porcelain manufactory. It is the world’s oldest product mark that has remained in continuous use, one of the most famous trademarks from Germany.
Video: Impressions of the porcelain manufactory
Three hundred years of Meissen. The mark has survived everything – aristocracy, bourgeoisie, fascism, two world wars and even “real existing socialism” in the GDR, followed by its release into a global market economy. The manufactory was named after Meißen, the eastern German town with just under 30,000 inhabitants that is half an hour from Dresden, the state capital of Saxony. Meißen, the town, is written with a “sharp s”, the character only used in German, while Meissen, the manufactory, prefers the internationally understandable double “s”.
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Meissen. Onion patterns, strewn flowers, expensive. Sunday tea, upper middle class, genteel – and a little boring. These are precisely the associations that CEO Dr. Christian Kurtzke aims to replace with a new image in the 300th year after the company’s foundation. So much innovation in such a short time must make many of the employees feel like the lump of porcelain on the rotating potter’s wheel with which weeks of skilled work often begin at the manufactory. Meissen is reinventing itself. Kurtzke, the 41-year-old electrical engineer with a passion for philosophy as well as considerable experience as a change management consultant, took on the job at the end of 2008. He has clearly defined goals: steering the manufactory, which was founded in 1710 and is today owned by the Free State of Saxony, onto a course of growth, significantly increasing the turnover of 35 million euros and transforming the cultural business into a truly commercial operation. The jubilee year represents an excellent opportunity and Kurtzke aims to exploit the worldwide attention.
How is he steering the tradition-steeped firm in a new direction? The strategy could be called “back to the future”. Kurtzke says a very clear “yes” to the traditions, above all to the tradition of innovation. After all, it was Johann Friedrich Böttger who was the first European to successfully make porcelain from kaolin, quartz and feldspar – the discovery on which the manufactory’s foundation by August the Strong of Saxony was based two years later. “Böttger showed me the way out of the crisis,” says Kurtzke without a trace of irony. Perhaps he was inspired by the bronze monument of the alchemist on the opposite side of the street. Böttger has a rather grim expression
on his face as he stares across Talstrasse towards the porcelain manufactory, right into Kurtzke’s office window. Böttger’s attempts at discovering the Chinese secret of porcelain manufacture initially produced a chocolate-coloured material that is today known in Germany as “Böttger stoneware”. Although rather nice, it was definitely not the “white gold” that would cure the Elector of Saxony of his “maladie de porcelaine”. However, studded with diamonds and precious stones, the brown shards could be transformed into original jewellery that the ladies at the Saxon court found “très chic”. “What a good idea!” thought Kurtzke to himself and set up the jewellery and accessories business segment at Meissen in only a few months. The move into the still little known Meissen architecture and interior design business segment also takes it back to its roots. Immediately after its foundation the manufactory worked as a “property outfitter” for August the Strong and decorated entire rooms and façades with porcelain.
Dresden tourists know the Procession of Princes at Dresden Castle, the world’s largest ceramic wall picture, which consists of 25,000 Meissen porcelain tiles. It was laid without joints and despite its ornate appearance is actually extremely weatherproof. The company is now taking this technology a step further with its new wall elements for luxurious bath and spa installations, for hotels and business centres. “Today architecture and interior design already account for 60% of our total business, tableware for only 40%,” says the CEO, who intends to continue further along this path with a new generation of wall elements launched in 2008. It has nothing in common with Baroque ornamentation, but relies on modest, modern elements with exciting deep colours – an architectural programme manufactured by hand using the expertise of centuries. “I believe space is the driver of innovation,” says Kurtzke and presents the projection of an exclusive bathroom in which everything from the wall designs to the lighting is all real Meissen. That’s his vision.
Kurtzke is the kind of manager you immediately believe is capable of inspiring his employees with new ideas. With a sparkle in his eye he explains how he intends to rejuvenate the target group. In discussion he inclines forward insistently and often follows sentences with the words “Do you understand?” – apparently he is accustomed to others not thinking as fast as he does. He repeatedly gets up and fetches an illustration or a piece of porcelain to show what motivates him. Of course, there will also be a lot of innovation in tableware. “We have 800,000 different designs; that’s like a classical musical repertoire from which a jazz pianist creates something entirely new.” It’s all a matter of interpretation. He then shows two dainty white tea cups without handles, white on the outside and glazed bright pink on the inside – stylish. “That could become the next must-have item,” says Kurtzke, adding that the design is 200 years old. He has intensively searched the enormous store and the archives looking for traditional forms like these that can be made up-to-date with only minor changes. He has already found a Baroque basin, a hand washing vessel, that has been transformed into a muesli bowl, and simple mocca cups that have been in the Meissen programme for 150 years but immediately became a topseller in 2009 as the Espresso dell’Arte Set. There is now also a sushi service and pasta plates – and suddenly 40% more customers under 35 in the shops.
Kurtzke doesn’t like the term “restructuring specialist” because of its associations with personnel cuts. He knows that his 800 employees, including 300 porcelain painters with many years of in-house training, are his most important capital. When asked the whereabouts of the arcanum, the well-kept secret of the exact composition of the porcelain itself as well as the over 10,000 colours, Kurtzke answers: “in the heads and hands of our staff”. You can gain an inkling of what he means not only in the demonstration workshop, which is visited by 300,000 people a year, but especially in the “real” manufactory. The company moved into the building in Talstrasse in the middle of the 19th century, when there was no longer enough room at the Albrechtsburg, where the manufactory was originally founded. Some people call it “the cloister”.
A certain contemplative tranquillity does indeed prevail in the halls on the ground floor. Like bread rolls on trays, cups and bowls wait here in stacks on trolleys before passing through three kilns. Every hand movement is carried out with great concentration. Hands are important here: simply everything about Meissen porcelain involves skilled handicraft. Behind the doors of the long corridors on the top floors, the porcelain painters are hard at work, each one of them specialized on flowers, landscapes or specific decorations. Almost all of them come from Meißen (the town) or the surrounding area. Using fine brushes of Canadian squirrel hair, they devote themselves to this symbiosis of art and handicraft. You begin to gain a completely different perspective on objects like the teapot with snowball blossoms, a vessel entirely covered with minute little blossoms that have been individually formed and then painted by many skilful hands. Created by Meissen’s top designer Johann Joachim Kaendler in 1739, it is part of the 40-piece jubilee collection with which the manufactory is celebrating its anniversary and also demonstrating its expertise. Some of the objects were immediately sold out. Classic Meissen still has many fans – worldwide.
That is also why Meissen has called the jubilee exhibition at its headquarters “All Nations Are Welcome”. It illustrates the manufactory’s centuries of international networking and also pays homage to its devotees: the display cabinets show which dinner service or artworks are especially liked in individual countries – flower decorations in Italy, dog figures in the UK and the swan dinner service in Poland. If you can’t make it to Meißen, you may still have a chance to see the jubilee collection during one of the stops on its world tour from Moscow to Shanghai.//
