Hard-paste of distinctive character was made at the faience factories of Strasbourg and Niderviller and of Joseph Robert at Marseilles. The first-named was closed at the instance of Vin cennes in 1753 and Paul Hannong, its proprietor, crossed the frontier to found the Frankenthal factory.
Some soft-paste of fine quality was made also at Sceaux, Orleans, Arras and St. Amand-les-Eaux, whilst at Tournai (which was part of France in the i8th century) soft-paste was used for wares inspired as much by Meissen as by Sevres.
The discovery of hard-paste by Johann Friedrich Mager was the result of experiments into the vitrification by heat of clays and rocks, conducted by him in association with Ehrenfried Walther Tschirnhausen, with whom he had been con cerned in the establishment of a faience factory at Dresden. Like almost all scientists of the time, Mager believed in the possibility of transmuting base metals into gold, and he was kept, virtually a prisoner, in the service of Augustus the Strong, King of Saxony, who hoped to benefit by the exclusive property of his alchemist's secrets. The first important product of Bottger's labours was a hard red stoneware, comparable with the so-called buccaro of Yi-hsing in China. First produced in 1708, it was quickly devel oped into a medium capable, by cutting and polishing, of express ing much of the baroque taste of the time. Silvering and gilding and a black glaze, invented by Mager, were sometimes added to it. Imitations were made at Plaue-an-der-Havel, and at Bayreuth. The first glazed white porcelain was produced by Bottger alone in 1709; its regular manufacture did not begin until four years later. The earliest specimens inclined to a smoky tone, and the decoration (for which Irminger, a goldsmith, was responsible) of applied acanthus leaves, masks and rich mouldings, was similar to that of the red ware.
171c) the manufacture was removed to the Albrechtsberg at Meissen, but the making of the white porcelain was not fully mastered until 1715. Though without adequate financial support, Mager succeeded in the four years before his death in 1719 in perfecting his material and in inventing a wide range of enamel colours, including a rare pale-violet lustre-colour almost peculiar to the factory and much used in the subsequent period.
1720 the painter Johann Gregor Heroldt was appointed director, and in the next 20 years introduced many new decora tions—chinoiseries in gold and colours, landscape- and figure subjects, as well as adaptations of Japanese and Chinese flowers (indianische Blumen) and other designs. Purple and red mon ochromes were used in a novel style. About 1740 Heroldt intro duced the naturalistic deutsche Blumen.' Though underglaze blue was never thoroughly mastered, many new colours were corn pounded for use as grounds, often richly gilt in baroque style, with panelled decoration. Almost every ground colour used else where later on was employed at Meissen under Heroldt.
The appointment as modeller of Johann Joachim Kaendler in 1731 marked the beginning of a period of great development in the plastic decoration. The king had constantly pressed for colossal figures in porcelain which Kaendler's predecessor, Gottlob Kirchner, had failed to produce to his satisfaction. Kaendler succeeded with these so far as the natural unfitness of the medium would allow ; and then proceeded to create a succession of new forms for table-ware—plates, tureens, sweetmeat-stands, cande labra, etc.—with modelled ornament, as well as a range of highly individual small figures. It was the court custom to group wax or sugar models on the dinner-tables, and Kaendler, helped by Friedrich Elias Meyer, Johann Friedrich Eberlein and Peter Reinicke, created many porcelain figures for use in the same way. Some subjects were novel in being drawn from contem porary life, embodying a satirical or witty commentary. Kaendler was the first to understand the potentialities of glaze and colour in the make-up of the porcelain figure, which in his hands was never merely monumental sculpture reduced in scale. French rococo was not without influence on Kaendler's style after about 1740, but he remained essentially a baroque sculptor, and continued to work for the factory until his death in 1775.