The Arcanum (27 page)

Intriguingly, Kaendler often uses porcelain itself as a prop within these groups. As in a picture within a picture he shows
us a gallant with his lady love, she holding a painted porcelain beaker of chocolate to his lips in a gesture filled with
seductive familiarity. Often these figures were inspired by the paintings of Watteau, but they have been embroidered with
extra romantic meaning. Many are said to show Augustus the Strong and one or other of his mistresses. In one he offers a lady
(perhaps the unfortunate Countess of Cozelle) a heart-shaped box, while she mirrors his affection by holding a heart to him.

Kaendler's detailed knowledge of court life is also implicit in the numerous figure groups in which a pug dog also features.
This endearing creature was much more than just a charming pet. Those familiar with the intrigues of the day would have been
well aware that they obliquely referred to the “Order of the Pug Dogs” or “Mopsorden,” a fashionable and frivolous offshoot
of the order of Freemasons of which the electors of Saxony were grand masters.

But the beauty of Kaendler's figures lay in the fact that one did not need to understand their significance to enjoy them.
Their endless variety, their color and their movement were captivating enough to attract an ever-increasing circle of international
collectors. One might not be able to afford the entire cast of the
commedia dell'arte
or a complete set of Parisian street sellers, but even a pair of figures invested their owners' homes with a certain refinement,
and at every level among well-to-do society the fashion for collecting them grew.

In the wealthiest royal quarters the sums spent on such luxuries could reach phenomenal proportions. Sir Charles Hanbury Williams
boasted to his relative Henry Fox that he had already been presented by the king with a “set of china for a table of thirty
covers, which would have cost here fifteen hundred pounds.” The service, said Sir Charles proudly, contained, apart from 350
pieces of tableware, 166 figures “to adorn the middle of the dessert.” This expenditure seems outrageously high, bearing in
mind that in China one would have been able to buy ten thousand blue and white porcelain plates for a little over £100.

Perhaps Augustus would have thought twice about offering such a generous gift had he known that Sir Charles was a bosom friend
of Sir Everard Fawkener, a key investor in the newly formed Chelsea soft paste porcelain factory. Soon after he had been dazzled
by the dinner at Count Brühl's, Sir Charles lent many of his own Meissen porcelains to the modelers at Chelsea. They took
molds from them and began to make extremely accurate copies in soft paste porcelain.

Chelsea figures might have lacked the perfection of Meissen, but in porcelain-hungry Britain, as elsewhere, there was a ready
audience for such novelties, even if they were of less sophisticated quality. Chelsea was only one among a number of British
and European ceramic manufactories that made a handsome living from peddling pirated versions of Kaendler's ideas. Soon even
humble cottage potters in Staffordshire were producing their own simplified earthenware versions of Dresden courtiers and
shepherdesses for an audience even further removed from the sophistication of the king's table than Count Brühl's unfortunate
tailor.

I wish the Empress, the King of Poland, Count Harach, and Count Brühl could better conceal their Enmity to his Prussian Majesty.…
It cannot long remain secret, and may at last give Jealousies very prejudicial to the Affairs of Europe, but particularly
to the Austrian and Saxon dominions.

Report by T
HOMAS
V
ILLIERS,
January 1756

E
ven if superficially everything appeared to be the same, Meissen had been changed by its Prussian experience. Long after the
last bloodstains had been cleansed, the walls whitewashed and the tiled floors scrubbed clean, an atmosphere of unrest lingered
in the vaulted halls of the Albrechtsburg.

It was only in the aftermath of Prussia's retreat that several key factory workers were found to have been enlisted into the
Prussian army or compelled to move to Berlin to help Frederick realize his porcelain ambitions. Others, spurred by greed,
necessity and despair, and above all by indifference to the loyalty demanded by Meissen's coldhearted director, Herold, had
used the opportunity offered by the chaotic conditions of the time to abscond and find employment elsewhere.

Frederick the Great was not alone in craving a porcelain factory. Princelings and entrepreneurs all over Europe wanted factories
of their own more urgently than ever, with the result that in the town of Meissen there was a seemingly endless stream of
outsiders with more than a casual interest in what went on in the fortress up the hill.

In the aftermath of the war salaries rose with production, but the increases were not enough to stop a number of poorly paid
Meissen workers from choosing to boost their incomes further by passing on a few tips about how the paste was compounded,
the glaze made or the porcelain fired. The information they gave was often vague and inaccurate—but this scarcely seems to
have mattered. There were many who were willing to part with quantities of gold or silver in return for inside information,
no matter how dubious its origins.

Everyone in the upper echelons of the factory knew that the arcanum could not remain inviolate in the face of such threats
forever. But despite the pervasive unease, work in the modeling rooms progressed unremittingly. As if defying others to match
him, Kaendler made ever more massive and breathtaking architectural centerpieces, some so huge that a grown man could have
sat in them. As emblems of wealth and dynastic power their message was clear: the larger the centerpiece, the more significant
the dining table, the more potent its owner.

For Augustus III, Kaendler produced a porcelain temple of honor nearly four meters high containing 127 individual pieces.
The stunning effect of the now lost original can still be appreciated from a later version at the Meissen factory museum.
It completely dwarfs the modest table on which it loftily towers.

Such grandiose objects also made startlingly impressive dynastic gifts and several were graciously bestowed by the king—visible
proof, if proof were needed, of Saxony's reestablished ceramic preeminence. The marriage of the Dauphin of France to Augustus's
daughter Maria Josepha was marked by the gift of a porcelain console table and a vast oval porcelain mirror, over three meters
high, made by Kaendler. The mirror's frame was festooned with figures of Apollo, classical muses, garlands of flowers and
shells. Such was the prestige and importance of the object that Kaendler was privileged to be allowed to leave Saxony—his
only trip abroad—to deliver the mirror personally to the French court in 1750.

Kaendler was dazzled by Paris and Versailles. He noted, perhaps with some trepidation, that the royal French porcelain manufactory
of Vincennes, though still making only soft paste porcelain and deriving its designs largely from Meissen's, was now beginning
to break new ground. Nonetheless he must have quickly assured himself that French porcelain was still only made in very limited
quantities and could not yet hope to match Meissen's domination of the European market.

Having installed his mirror and table in the dauphin's palace, Kaendler returned to Dresden feeling secure in the knowledge
that his creations would remain there forever as testimony to the unchallengeable superiority of Meissen porcelain over that
of France. Both these assumptions were soon to be proved hopelessly wrong. As archetypal emblems of royal privilege and excess
the mirror and table were to be smashed to annihilation by revolutionaries. Saxony's porcelain supremacy was to suffer a similar
fate.

Left behind to watch over the factory, Herold could hardly fail to realize that he was more sidelined than ever by Kaendler's
virtuoso genius. But even a porcelain maestro may eventually overstretch himself, and in the case of Kaendler the setback
was to be as monumental as the masterpieces he strove to create.

Kaendler had set his heart on making the largest figure from porcelain the world has ever known: a giant equestrian statue
of the king that would measure in its final form an incredible nine meters or more high.

The idea had begun in 1731 when he had been summoned to sketch Augustus the Strong on horseback. Three years later, on the
accession of the new monarch, Kaendler heard that a new life-sized gilded copper equestrian statue of the king had recently
been commissioned and the notion of a large porcelain statue of Augustus III began to dawn. The copper figure was impressive
but, proposed Kaendler, why not also mark the new king's accession with a porcelain version? It would be a far more spectacular
and appropriate way in which to glorify the king of the porcelain capital of the world.

Immersed in buying jewels and fine paintings for his burgeoning royal collection, the king remained ambivalent and Herold
was not slow to take advantage of his indecision. Such a figure was far larger than anything even Kaendler had attempted so
far—it must be impossible to make. Furthermore, he whispered convincingly, there was no room at the castle for such a bulky
object to be stored. To Augustus, always easily swayed by his advisors, such a risky and contentious scheme suddenly seemed
pointless. Despite Kaendler's protestations and reassurances, he adamantly declined to commission it.

But Kaendler's dream monument refused to die. With the persistence for which he was already famed, he continued to carry out
his usual day-to-day duties, but in secret sketched innumerable designs for the massive figure. The fervor continued while
he was in hiding during Frederick the Great's occupation of Meissen. He started work on a clay model for the porcelain statue,
paying for the materials and the help of an assistant from his own pocket, and at the same time incessantly pestering Count
Brühl to persuade the king to change his mind.

To start with, even the count's recommendations failed to break the king's resolve. Augustus was still stubbornly unconvinced
that such a grandiose scheme was either worthwhile or technically viable. Finally, in 1751, the pressure paid off; the king
relented and Kaendler was at last officially commissioned to proceed on the project and paid 15,000 thalers for the cost of
making a small and a large version of the figure.

Even then Herold raised objections. But with royal backing Kaendler now had the upper hand. New space was rented in the cathedral
courtyard and a wooden shed specially constructed. Kaendler would work with numerous assistants, all of whom he would house
and feed in his nearby home in the square.

Over the next two years the final design took shape. There would be a rock-framed base, around which a vast procession of
figures symbolizing justice, peace, the arts and sciences and the rivers Elbe and Vistula would gesture theatrically upward—leading
the eye to the majestic figure of the king astride his rearing Lipizzaner.

Almost as soon as the design was approved the small version was successfully fired—it remains one of the most spectacular
exhibits in the Dresden porcelain museum to this day. The molds for the final large version, Kaendler promised, would be ready
by 1755, then it would just be a matter of firing the pieces before the final object was finished.

Even at this late stage the progress of this massive scheme in which Kaendler had invested so much of his time, money and
talent did not run smoothly. Herold refused to cooperate with Kaendler's requests for more paste, and complained that the
molds were already taking up precious storage space. Eventually Kaendler had to evict fellow workers who were lodging in his
house in order to store the molds.

Ultimately, however, Herold was no match for Kaendler at his most determined and it was to be political events rather than
Herold's animosity that would prove the fatal stumbling block. By 1756 danger in the form of Frederick the Great once again
loomed, and with the specter of impending invasion marking the advent of the Seven Years' War, all funds for Kaendler's monumental
project immediately dried up.

Since the end of the Second Silesian War and his retreat from Saxony some ten years earlier, Frederick had felt increasingly
isolated by an unexpected coalition between Austria and France, both of which wanted to crush the “evil man of Sans Souci.”
Frederick had used the years of peace to rebuild his country and develop its industries and agriculture. Now once again his
position was threatened.

Having formed an alliance with England, he decided with his usual incisiveness to avert the threat of an imminent attack by
his enemies and keep hold of the territory he had gained ten years earlier by once again invading the weak and hapless Saxony.
On August 27, 1756, a Prussian army of some seventy thousand troops marched into Saxony. A fortnight later Frederick's troops
had stormed through the bountiful plains of the Elbe and taken possession of Dresden.