A history of porcelain in the heart of Europe over three hundred years is an ambitious endeavor. The timespan chosen by Suzanne Marchand covers the industrialization of Europe's economies and the modernization of their societies. It also corresponds to the momentous process of nation building that led a myriad of German states, comprised in a medieval imperial structure, to unify as a Reich that would be destroyed and rebuilt multiple times, to be left, after World War II, divided into two very different political entities. This wide range of analysis is dictated by the author's research question: how could a product once considered an alchemical secret second only to the philosophers’ stone become a neglected object, relegated to thrift shops and the trash bin?
The usual histories of European porcelain concentrate on the epic years of the trade—the discovery of the secret recipe and the founding of the first mythical manufactories from Meissen to Doccia—or its golden age in the second half of the eighteenth century. Few have the courage to show the descending part of the parabola, the corruption of the artistry by the imposition of market logic and the spread of mass consumption, not to mention the negligibility of contemporary production. Marchand does not shy from the task, and her book neatly traces the difficult transformation of the porcelain sector from courtly manufactories to big businesses dedicated to the production of technical porcelain: tiles, pipes, insulators, and toilets. She repeatedly addresses the failure of factory managers and critics from the artistic milieu to comprehend that they must appreciate the eclectic, backward looking, and at times cacophonic tastes of their multiplying bourgeois customers to remain profitable once the princely demand ebbed out. Marchand's book is not a reading of the history of European porcelain that follows artistic fashions and clearly delimits, for example, rococo from neoclassicism. The mish-mash of popular taste, in her interpretation, is the reason why design and functionalism could not align in porcelain making in the interwar years (314–18). Novelties, now very much sought after by collectors, were shunned by contemporary demand. This very interesting interpretative angle, however, remains tainted by the prejudice that mass consumption entails a taste that cannot be refined. The artistry so intertwined with the birth of the first porcelain makers in Europe could not survive the transformation of manufactories into big businesses. This, in turn, argues Marchand, explains the present-day lack of popularity: porcelain lost its glanz, following economic sense.
Marchand's thesis is worthy of a major discussion by all who have an interest in the history of porcelain and of consumption. To substantiate it, however, a comparison should have been made with other objects of everyday use that more successfully survived the emergence of mass consumption by incorporating design and making out of functionality a form of art. A comparison, also, could have been made with cases in which collaboration with a designer was indeed successful, as in the case of Ginori and Gio Ponti. Moreover, there have been cultural changes in the use of porcelain. The production of tiles, for example, was influenced by modern art more, perhaps, than tableware, and bathrooms have become one of the primary places where we practice our well-being. A major question should then be: why has tableware lost its function—though perhaps only temporarily—as a representation of the self, a form of display, a source of utility and satisfaction? How is it that dishes, cups, saucers, and terrines—once objects of art, painted in still lifes by masters—fail to generate, today, any interest at all? We photograph food, not its receptacle, and the container has a value only in respect of what is displayed in it.
Marchand, however, does not center her study on these questions, preferring to generally depict the evolution of the porcelain sector in German speaking states from the foundation of Meissen to the present day. To do so, she analyzes not only demand but also production. In just four hundred pages, such a story could lead to excessive generalization, but the value of the book lies not in the information given—extensive and accurate as it is—as much as in its often innovative interpretations. From the start, for example, Marchand attaches to the production of porcelain in Saxony, Bohemia, Bavaria, and Silesia a different role from the one usually highlighted of princely competition over glanz. She justly underlines how porcelain, being firstly produced at Meissen and then Vienna, brought the technological frontier of luxury production to states that up to that time had been negligible markets. Therefore, not only were princes included into the frenzied spending habits of the French kings, but public administrators, scientists, and entrepreneurs were confronted with the problems connected with a centralized production process, cost computing and assessment, working relations, and flimsy demand. Porcelain, in this sense, was not only a gateway to baroque excesses and libertinism but also to modern factory management.
Marchand introduces the concept of “populuxe” (60–65) to explain how the diffusion of new drinking habits, specifically coffee, among the lower classes and the slow vanishing of sumptuary laws allowed for a more generalized use of porcelain. She also examines the role of women as consumers, underlining how slowly they were allowed to manage expenses: shopping—if not done by the mistresses of the prince in the renowned German fairs like Leipzig—became a possibility only after 1850 and a habit only after 1950. These changes in tastes and consumers, in turn, caused adjustments in the firms’ pricing policies, choice of distribution channels, and early attempts at marketing.
Overall, while Marchand's volume does not present innovative data, given the width of her analysis it still offers generous insight into the evolution of technology, managerial culture, working conditions, and marketing practices. Of specific interest is the comparison, over time, of state managed enterprises and privately owned ones. Marchand attentively analyzes how differences in ownership impacted not only the financial strength and managerial structure of firms but also the capability to respond to changes in the market. The role of institutions is also connected—again with a fresh interpretative angle—with the imposition of certain styles on the production of state enterprises. In the eighteenth century, this may have been a source of artistic inspiration, but later, in Wilhelmine Germany (283) and in the Third Reich (369–71), it often happened to the detriment of the innovative drive of artisans and artistic managers.
Recent historiography has analyzed porcelain as the perfect object of a global history (Robert Finlay, The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History [Oakland, 2010]). Marchand, instead, has chosen to write a “total” history of German porcelain (11), uniting cultural history, for the demand side of the market, and business history, for the production side. In doing so, she succeeds in giving a complete and colorful picture of the making and uses of porcelain in the heart of Europe, though the breadth of the study at times blurs the contours of the characters and the environment in which they move. Scholars and young researchers are called now to redefine these shapes and forms by letting primary sources give more precise answers to the many interpretative questions that Marchand has prompted, enriching in no minor measure the history of porcelain.
