Lot 28G: Paul DUBOY (1830-1887) BUSTE DE JEUNE FEMME À LA TRESSE1873

Paul DUBOY (1830-1887)
BUSTE DE JEUNE FEMME À LA TRESSE1873
Biscuit
Signé daté au dos Socle en porcelaine de Paris
52 x 30 cm
€ 1 000 - 1 500

These exported Chinese porcelains were held in such great esteem in Europe that in the English language china became a commonly–used synonym for the Italian term porcelain. The first mention of porcelain in Europe is in Il Milione by Marco Polo in XII sec.[17] Apart from copying Chinese porcelain in faience (tin glazed earthenware), the soft-paste Medici porcelain in 16th-century Florence was the first real European attempt to reproduce it, with little success.
Early in the 16th century, Portuguese traders returned home with samples of kaolin, which they discovered in China to be essential in the production of porcelain wares. However, the Chinese techniques and composition used to manufacture porcelain were not yet fully understood.[10]Countless experiments to produce porcelain had unpredictable results and met with failure.[10] In the German state of Saxony, the search concluded in 1708 when Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus produced a hard, white, translucent type of porcelain specimen with a combination of ingredients, including kaolin and alabaster, mined from a Saxon mine in Colditz.[18][19] It was a closely guarded trade secret of the Saxon enterprise.[19][20]
In 1712, many of the elaborate Chinese porcelain manufacturing secrets were revealed throughout Europe by the French Jesuit father Francois Xavier d'Entrecolles and soon published in the Lettres édifiantes et curieuses de Chine par des missionnaires jésuites.[21] The secrets, which d'Entrecolles read about and witnessed in China, were now known and began seeing use in Europe.[21]
Meissen[edit]


Meissen plate from the huge and famous Swan Service, 1737-42
Von Tschirnhaus and Johann Friedrich Böttger were employed by Augustus II the Strong and worked at Dresden and Meissen in the German state of Saxony. Tschirnhaus had a wide knowledge of science and had been involved in the European quest to perfect porcelain manufacture when in 1705 Böttger was appointed to assist him in this task. Böttger had originally been trained as a pharmacist; after he turned to alchemical research, he claimed to have known the secret of transmuting dross into gold, which attracted the attention of Augustus. Imprisoned by Augustus as an incentive to hasten his research, Böttger was obliged to work with other alchemists in the futile search for transmutation and was eventually assigned to assist Tschirnhaus.[18] One of the first results of the collaboration between the two was the development of a red stoneware that resembled that of Yixing.
A workshop note records that the first specimen of hard, white and vitrified European porcelain was produced in 1708. At the time, the research was still being supervised by Tschirnhaus; however, he died in October of that year. It was left to Böttger to report to Augustus in March 1709 that he could make porcelain. For this reason, credit for the European discovery of porcelain is traditionally ascribed to him rather than Tschirnhaus.[22]
The Meissen factory was established in 1710 after the development of a kiln and a glaze suitable for use with Böttger's porcelain, which required firing at temperatures of up to 1,400 °C (2,552 °F) to achieve translucence. Meissen porcelain was once-fired, or green-fired. It was noted for its great resistance to thermal shock; a visitor to the factory in Böttger's time reported having seen a white-hot teapot being removed from the kiln and dropped into cold water without damage. Although widely disbelieved this has been replicated in modern times.[23]
Soft paste porcelain[edit]


Saint-Cloud manufactory soft porcelain bowl, with blue decoration under glaze, 1700–1710.


Chantilly porcelain, soft-paste, 1750-1760
Main article: Soft-paste porcelain
The pastes produced by combining clay and powdered glass (frit) were called Frittenporzellan in Germany and frita in Spain. In France they were known as pâte tendre and in England as "soft-paste".[24] They appear to have been given this name because they do not easily retain their shape in the wet state, or because they tend to slump in the kiln under high temperature, or because the body and the glaze can be easily scratched.
Experiments at Rouen produced the earliest soft-paste in France, but the first important French soft-paste porcelain was made at the Saint-Cloud factory before 1702. Soft-paste factories were established with the Chantilly manufactory in 1730 and at Mennecy in 1750. The Vincennes porcelain factory was established in 1740, moving to larger premises at Sèvres[25] in 1756. Vincennes soft-paste was whiter and freer of imperfections than any of its French rivals, which put Vincennes/Sèvres porcelain in the leading position in France and throughout the whole of Europe in the second half of the 18th century.[26]
The first soft-paste in England was demonstrated by Thomas Briand to the Royal Society in 1742 and is believed to have been based on the Saint-Cloud formula. In 1749, Thomas Frye took out a patent on a porcelain containing bone ash. This was the first bone china, subsequently perfected by Josiah Spode.
In the twenty-five years after Briand's demonstration, a number of factories were founded in England to make soft-paste table-wares and figures:
• Chelsea (1743)[27][28]
• Bow (1745)[29][30][31]
• St James's (1748)[31][32]
• Bristol porcelain (1748)
• Longton Hall (1750)[33]
• Royal Crown Derby (1750 or 1757)[34][35]
• Royal Worcester (1751)
• Lowestoft porcelain (1757)[36]
• Wedgwood (1759)
• Spode (1767)