Porcelain in Dresden

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 2003 by Ulrich Pietsch

In-the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the whole of Europe was fascinated by chinoiseric (Chinsercy in German). It was more than just a fashion; it was almost a way of life. The trend began around 1650, helped by the expanding Dutch and Portuguese trade with China and Japan. The many stories traders and missionaries brought back from the Far East led Europeans to believe that it must be a land of dreams, utterly different from they own After the Thirty Years' War and the chaos it left behind people longed for peace and quiet. In the European imagination China, mysterious and largely unknown, became an earthly paradise. Travelers tales and their pictures as well as the works of Chinese poets and porcelain painters compared up a vision of he beauty of the Chinese landscape, with its snow-covered mountains, meandering rivers on which floated barges filled with green jade and other luxuries--richly decorated porcelain, shimmerings silks, and aromatic teas. There, under palm trees and bamboo, grew huge chrysanthemums and peonies, as well as wisteria. Picturesquely arranged in this lush setting were towns and villages with pagodas and huts roofed with gigantic leaves The fauna in this land of dreams was just as extraordinary: huge dragons athing fire peered out of caves, birds had rainbow-colored plu mage, butterflies were the size of sofa cushions, and pale goldfish swam among water lilies, lotus flowers, and fantastical lava rocks. (2) There was a carefree Sunday feeling among the smiling, splendkily dressed people, strolling in their Garden of Eden under wide-brimmed straw-hats or parasols, cooling the air with fans. Peace and harmony appeared to reign in the fairy-tale land of the powerful but tolerant Chinese emperor Kangxi (r. 1662-1722).

This vision was extravagantly praised by the political philosopher Charles de Secondat (1689-1755), baron de Montesquieu, and the writer Voltaire (1694-1778) as the land of great wisdom, while the German philosopher Gottfried Wilheml Leihniz (1646-1716) contemplated improving conditions in Europe by bringing in Chinese missionaries. He went so far as to recommend Chinese as the universal language. At the same time he continued to advocate missionary work in China, not so much to convert the Chinese to Christianity but as a means for expanding cultural exchanges between European and Asian civilizations.

Leibniz's Novissima Sinica (Leipzig? 1697) was the result of his extensive correspondence with Jesuit missionaries at the Chinese court, prompting him to describe the Chinese system as the perfect system of government, with a smoothly functioning bureaucracy and flourishing economy The state appeared to govern society in a reasonable and orderly fashion. Moreover, since Leibniz thought that the philosophy of Confucius (551-479 B.c.) was one of the wisest in the world, China, with these advantages, was considered the ideal country by the European Enlightenment. (2)

Meanwhile, to re-create the magical world of the Far East, the European aristocracy built Chinese temples in their parks and decorated them with lacquer furniture, porcelain, and silk wallpaper. There they imbibed new exotic drinks like tea, coffee, and hot chocolate, which stimulated the senses and produced a state of well-being.

Not everyone joined in the admiration for everything Chinese. Ernest Augustus (r. 1692- 1698), first elector of Hanover and duke of Braunschweig-Luneburg (the father of George I [r. 1714-1727] of England) scorned the pagoda in the park of Salzdahium, the castle of Anton Ulrich, duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbuttel (1633-1714). Ernest Augustus felt the only thing to do was "to ridicule the park" and thought it strange to "build a tower la chinoise" above a building "which is called parnassus .... with bells that chime in the wind." (3)

Sometimes the princely building craze in the Chinese style took on surreal overtones. A gently bowed wooden bridge with seven arches did not lead into the Forbidden City, but only across the watery landscape near Hampton Court in England. William Augustus (1721-1765), duke of Cumberland, went even further and created a lake in Windsor Great Park in Surrey complete with an island on which there was a pagoda. The only way to get there was in what was referred to as a Mandarin yacht.

Not only eccentric Englishmen fell under China's spell. The otherwise disciplined Frederick II (Frederick the Great; r. 1740-1786), king of Prussia, built a Chinese teahouse in the park of Sanssouci, his palace in Potsdam near Berlin, and he spent a fortune trying without success to breed silkworms in the Mark Brandenburg, the plain around Berlin.

Since the late seventeenth century Chinese and Japanese porcelain had joined Chinese silk as important embellishments of the princely lifestyle. No aristocrat of standing could live without a porcelain cabinet in his palace, and no other material is so connected with its country of origin as porcelain, which, after all, is also called "china" in English. Not unexpectedly, Augustus II (the Strong), the elector of Saxony and king of Poland, was much taken by these charming and fragile luxury goods. He was known not only as the Saxon Casanova because of his many mistresses, but also as a lover of the arts. He founded one of the greatest painting galleries, the Gamaldegalerie (painting gallery) in Dresden, and one of the most important treasuries, the Grunes Gewolbe (Green Vault), as well as his porcelain collection. Thanks to the rich Saxon silver mines and his productive glass and textile factories Augustus engaged the architect Matthaus Daniel Poppelmann (1662-1736) and the sculptor Balthasar Permoser (1651-17 32) to build the Zwinger, a palatial complex of buildings in Dresden, and a palace in the Chinese style at Pillnitz, high above the city. Augustus also built the Turkisches Palais (Turkish Palace) in the city and developed a fondness for all things Egyptian. It was a time when the stranger and more extravagant the culture, the more easily it was accepted at the European courts.