The Vezzi brother’s (Francesco and Giuseppe) pottery in Venice made hard-paste porcelain with a slightly smoky colour from 1720 to 1727 AD, using Saxon kaolin. It had to close when the export of kaolin from Saxony was again banned. Their wares were in the Baroque style with brownish-red as a predominant colour, teapots being a speciality. The Vezzi pottery was a very early proponent of underglaze blue decoration. Most Venetian porcelain was made later, in the Cozzi Pottery, using Vicenza kaolin. It was named after the banker, Cozzi, who supported it from 1758 AD. He took it over in 1764 AD and was granted a monopoly by the Venice senate in 1765 AD.  The factory made figures and tableware, using oriental motifs before copying Meissen and Sevres styles. They also made majolica after 1768 and stoneware after 1781 AD. They closed in 1812 AD.

Cozzi hard-paste porcelain, 1760-80 AD,
Chinoiserie landscape saucer, and tea bowl
- courtesy R&G McPherson Antiques

12.1.7 Meissen

A great investment in artists, modellers and decorators was made by the Elector at Meissen, which produced particularly finely decorated porcelain. The best pieces were marked AR (Augustus Rex) as they were not for sale but for Royal use. Chinoiserie decoration was used on the earliest wares, some in gold silhouette and later in polychrome. Early on eastern flowers (Indianische Blumen) and Kakiemon Arita styles were closely copied and these styles persisted for many years.

Meissen hard-paste
porcelain vase in Eastern
style, J G Horoldt 1730 AD
- source Musee de Arts
Decoratif via Wikipedia

Initially, the range of early overglaze colours was limited, but when J.G. Horoldt arrived from Vienna he created a new brilliant colour range, including ground colours. He worked as a free artist on piecework rates, and set the character of porcelain decoration for Meissen’s first decades. He welded together foreground and background decoration with the form of the ceramic. Specialities were landscapes and harbour scenes.

18^th century Meissen cup and saucer

As well as such detailed topographical subjects, artists used local flowers (Deutsche Blumen) as motifs for decoration. Some plain porcelain “in the white” was decorated by independent studios outside Meissen, called Hausmaler workshops, as well as being exported and decorated in other countries.

One of Augustus’s architectural projects around 1715 AD was the fantastic Japanisches Palace (the Porzellan Schloss) that was expanded in the 1720’s and 30’s to become a spectacular four-winged oriental style palace near the centre of Dresden. The ground floor was for oriental and the first floor for Meissen porcelain. There were 32 rooms that were colour-coded to hold different suites of porcelain. By 1727 AD it contained some 24,000 pieces of oriental porcelain, and even the organ and throne were made of porcelain.

Meissen cup and saucer with view of Venice and
Deutsche blumen 1740-50 AD - courtesy
R&G McPherson Antiques

Meissen saucer made 1724 AD, decorated in
Horoldt style by a Hausmaler workshop in Augsburg
in 1725-28 AD - courtesy R&G McPherson Antiques

Meissen hard-paste teapots made in 1720 AD,
decorated in Holland in 1735 AD

Chinese Kangxi export plate from the collection
of Augustus the Strong, 1700-20 AD
- courtesy R&G McPherson Antiques