Unterweißbacher workshops for porcelain art

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Schwarzburger workshops for porcelain art

logo
legal form Tettau GmbH
founding 1909
Seat Rudolstadt , Germany
Branch Ceramics
Website www.glaeserneporzellanmanufaktur.eu

The Unterweißbach workshops for porcelain art were founded in 1882 by Hermann Jost in Unterweißbach ( Thuringia ). They started with the manufacture of tableware. Today the range also includes gardener figures such as traders, musicians, carriages, animals and dancers (some covered with porcelain lace) and still devotional items such as holy kettles, expanded to include Christmas decorations.

The Schwarzburger Werkstätten as an art department

In 1909, Max Adolf Pfeiffer (1875–1957) founded the Schwarzburg workshops for porcelain art as an art department in the Unterweißbach workshops . Pfeiffer could do artists like Ernst Barlach , Friedrich Franz Brockmüller , Adolf Brütt , Dorothea Charol , Gerhard Marcks , Karl Menser , Carl Fuchs, Wilhelm August Goebel, Karl Himmelstoss , Otto Kramer, Reinhold Martin Kuntze, Hugo Meisel, Adelbert Niemeyer , Gustav Oppel, Otto Thiem , Mauritius Pfeiffer , Etha Richter , Helene Ruoff, Arthur Storch and Richard Scheibe , Paul Scheurich , Edmund Sode and Claire Volkhart for the workshops. This art department's trademark, the embossed lacing fox, was used from the start. The collaboration with these sculptors and artists resulted in an abundance of porcelain sculptures, the uniqueness of which is still unmatched today.

Pupils from Brütt's Weimar Sculpture School , founded in 1905 , also provided models (including Franziska v. Seeger and Wolfgang) in the workshop building designed by Henry van de Velde , which was then used jointly with the new Grand Ducal School of Applied Arts from 1908 and had a ceramic stove Schwartzkopff). The world exhibition in Brussels in 1910 made the simple porcelain of the "Schwarzburger Werkstätten für Porzellankunst" famous.

A catalog of the Schwarzburger Werkstätten was published in 1912. In 1913 Max Adolf Pfeiffer took over the management of the Meissen porcelain factory , while the company in Unterweißbach continued to exist until it went bankrupt around 1930, then was briefly connected to the oldest Volkstedter porcelain factory (the models of the Schwarzburger Werkstätten and are being re-formed today) and still exist today as a manufactory.

Max Adolf Pfeiffer went to Meißen in April 1913 and there, during the so-called Pfeiffer era, continued to translate his unusual passion for porcelain into porcelain works of art.

Heinz Schaubach Unterweißbach

In 1940, Heinz Schaubach acquired the bankrupt Unterweißbacher Werkstätten, founded the Heinz Schaubach Unterweißbach company and ran this company together with Schaubachkunst in Lichte (Wallendorf) until it was expropriated by the GDR in 1953.

Many of the exhibits from the Schwarzburg workshops for porcelain art are being remodeled (partly limited) today.

After reunification

After reunification, the Unterweißbach workshops for porcelain art were taken over by the royal privileged porcelain factory Tettau (a 100% subsidiary of Seltmann Weiden ) and still produce in the building of the Aeltesten Volkstedter porcelain factory in Volkstedt (Rudolstadt) .

Web links

literature

  • Schwarzburg workshops for porcelain art: Max Adolf Pfeiffer GmbH , a report by Max Adolf Pfeiffer, along with some remarks on collecting porcelain and on colored glazes, Unterweißbach, Leipzig, 1912
  • Manfred Meinz : Die Schwarzburger Werkstätten für Porzellankunst and Alfred Mohrbutter , in: Keramos 62, 1973, pp. 34–35
  • Schwarzburger workshops for porcelain art: Unterweissbach u. Rudolstadt-Volkstedt, 1909–1949. Catalog to the. Exhibition in the Thuringian Museum Eisenach, in the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin-Köpenick , Rudolstadt 1983
  • Ekkehardt Kraemer (ed.): Saxon-Thuringian manufactory porcelain. Glass ceramic. Nationally owned foreign trade company of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin 1985. 3rd expanded edition 1987: pages 38–43.
  • Susanne Wallner, Ursula Koch, Alfred Koch, Helmut Scherf, Wilhelm Siemen (eds.): Schwarzburger Werkstätten für Porzellankunst , (publications and catalogs of the Museum of the German Porcelain Industry 35), Hohenberg / Eger, Museum of the German Porcelain Industry 1993, ISBN 3-927793 -34-5
  • Schwarzburger workshops for porcelain art. Catalog raisonné. A handbook for collectors, art dealers and museums. Edited by Jeanette Lauterbach. Thuringian State Museum Heidecksburg Rudolstadt 2013, ISBN 978-3-910013-80-3