Earthenware factory on dam
The stoneware factory in Damm produced stoneware that was popularly known as "Dammer Porcelain".
history
founding
In 1804, Franz Seraph Czihak , who moved to Aschaffenburg in 1797, received the privilege of running an English stoneware factory , "Fürstlich Löwenstein-Wertheim'sche Hofrat, the medicament and wound medicine customer Doctor" . There were no donors, so production was not started. In 1827 there were two concessionaires who applied for stoneware production in what is now the Damm district of the city of Aschaffenburg: Anselm Strauss in the Aschaffenburg district and Anna Maria Müller in the then independent rural community of Damm.
Anselm Strauss (born April 20, 1780 in Aschaffenburg as the son of the Imperial Post Administrator Heinrich Strauss) was the founder of the "Zum Vogel Strauss" pharmacy, professor at Aschaffenburg Charles University (1808) and from 1809 at the Aschaffenburg Forest Institute . On December 4, 1827, Strauss was granted the privilege of producing a special mass for burnt earthenware, to which talc earth (magnesium silicate hydrate) was added, which Strauss obtained from the mother liquor of the Orber Saline. The privilege also included "the peculiar treatment of a silica and talc-containing mass to earthenware without fire". The mass was bound using water glass, which was first produced in 1818 by the chemist Johann Nepomuk von Fuchs . According to the privilege, the remaining components of the stone and earthenware masses should include: white and colored clays from Damm, Aschaffenburg, Großostheim, Wenigumstadt, Kleinwallstadt, Großwallstadt and Klingenberg, then quartz, quartz sand and flint from Aschaffenburg, feldspar from Mainaschaff and weathered, coal-soured Kalk from Homburg am Main. Depending on the proportions of the added earth, different ceramic products could be formed from the earthenware mass, from monochrome sanitary earthenware to tableware with decorations and ceramic busts. The "Steingut-Fabrique AF Strauss und Comp." Started production in the Aschaffenburg hazelnut mill. But as early as 1829 Strauss voluntarily renounced his privilege: the soda was released from the hardened, but unfired earthenware mass. The unfired earthenware was no longer permitted for cooking and drinking utensils for health reasons.
The Frankfurt trader Heinrich Franz Metz, the company's financier, took over all the shares in the same year. Anselm Strauss died on April 8, 1830 in Aschaffenburg. The earthenware factory at the hazelnut mill was publicly auctioned on June 4, 1833. In the original cadastre 1845 the approx. 3300 m² large company property on Glattbach is shown with three smaller buildings and a chimney. In the Franconian Museum Würzburg there were several plates with grape tendrils in relief on the edge and with the stamp "F. Metz Aschaffenburg", at least back in the 1920s.
Anna Maria Müller, the widow of the former court controller Arnold Müller - both had moved to Aschaffenburg in 1803 - began a week after Anselm Strauss with the Müller'schen factory in the Dammer Herrenmühle with the production of Dammer stoneware. Her second oldest son, Dr. phil. Daniel Ernst Müller (born April 3, 1797 Mainz, † July 28, 1868 Aschaffenburg) was in the Bavarian forest service in Aschaffenburg from 1818. He was also the owner of the Müller'schen Steinutfabrik in Damm, together with his brother-in-law Jakob Heinrich von Hefner-Alteneck they made Dammer products a success. While Hefner influenced the production as an artistic adviser, Müller achieved recognition by visiting national and international exhibitions. They made utensils such as dinner, coffee and laundry services. “This slightly formed and well-fired crockery made of white and printed goods is recommended for its pleasing appearance as well as its cheap price. The colored overprint is to be called complete and is not surpassed by any factory abroad ”, this is the verdict of the Dammer stoneware at the industrial exhibition in Munich 1835.
Heyday
The heyday of the Müller stoneware factory, which also included the Mechenhard clay pits near Klingenberg, began in 1840 when the former Kurmainzer porcelain factory in Höchst began producing figures according to shapes . "These forms, almost exclusively from models by the famous modeller JP Melchior, were reworked in earthenware, found brilliant sales for several decades and secured Damm its reputation as a production facility for figurative earthenware products." As collector's items, (brand: "six-spoke Mainz wheel with D" or lettering " DAMM ") they are in great demand today. The models adopted include mischievous boys and girls (peasant musician, the broken egg, boy making soap bubbles, girl with the pear, girl with dove,) and children's groups (the disturbed slumber, wrestling boys, dancing children), the Emperor of China, the Turkish Pasha and Venus with Cupid.
However, own models were also produced, mainly in the sacred area, such as Moses, the blessing Christ, Calvary, the Twelve Apostles, and in the secular area, such as the Eisenhannes, the Schnupfer, the pipe tamper.
In 1845, the approximately 7000 m² site comprised the former manor mill, now Letron, and a larger property on the opposite side of the street behind what was then Dammer Church. There was also a circular building (outer diameter 12.5 m) to which further factory buildings were attached from the north and south - apparently the kiln, the underground furnace of which had been preserved until a few years ago. In its place is now the residential building Dorfstrasse 7c. The rounded corners of the building that no longer existed in 1845 in today's garden of the residential building Dorfgasse 7c to the south-west give rise to the assumption that another round structure of this type could have existed there. Dammer stoneware was presented at the General Industry Exhibition in Munich in 1854, at the General Paris Exhibition of Agricultural Products, Industry and Fine Arts in 1855, at the District Industry Exhibition of Lower Franconia and Aschaffenburg in 1858 in Würzburg and at the Vienna World Exhibition Issued in 1873 .
Decline
The upward trend of the Dammer stoneware factory came to an end in 1860 when Caspar Marzell, a goods wholesaler in Frankfurt, bought the factory. The increasing difficulties in the manufacture and sale of the products led in the spring of 1880 to the foreclosure auction of the factory, the Höchst figure and group forms. Under the new owners, first the Frankfurt fruit dealer Levi Lindenbaum and then the privateer Heinrich Dahlem and the “mill doctor” Ignaz Ready, there was no longer any regular production.
In 1885 Dahlem built a colored paper factory on the factory premises .
The Höchst and Dammer figure shapes were bought in 1886/87 to the FA Mehlem stoneware factory in Bonn, and in 1903 they were sold on to the Dressel, Kister & Co. Passau company, which then produced porcelain molds under a blue wheel and crosier.
literature
- Erich Stenger : The stoneware factory Damm near Aschaffenburg 1827–1884. Pattloch, Aschaffenburg 1949. ISBN 3-87965-050-0 (reprint).
- Brigitte Schad: The figurative products of the Damm stoneware factory 1840–1884. Geschichts- und Kunstverein Aschaffenburg eV, Aschaffenburg 1991. ISBN 3-87965-055-1 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Erich Stenger: The stoneware factory Damm near Aschaffenburg 1827-1884 .
- ↑ Brigitte Schad: The figurative products of the stoneware factory Damm 1840–1884.
- ^ Castle Museum of the City of Aschaffenburg
- ^ Hessisches Landesmuseum, Wiesbaden
- ↑ Middle Rhine State Museum Mainz.
- ^ Castle Museum of the City of Aschaffenburg
- ^ Castle Museum of the City of Aschaffenburg
- ^ All in the possession of the castle museum of the city of Aschaffenburg
- ↑ Aschaffenburger Zeitung No. 81 of April 3, 1880