Porcelain in Thuringia - PorcelainSite.com

Porcelain in Thuringia

The re-invention of porcelain started in Thuringia around 1760. At three places in the south eastern thuringian forest at the same time the porcelain was re-invented fifty years after Boettger invented it first in Meissen. Three persons were responsible for that success : Georg Heinrich Macheleid, Johann Gotthelf Greiner and Johann Wolfgang Hammann.

Georg Heinrich Macheleid, an enlightened man but afraid of people and a peculiar character, was a child of the thuringian forest. His native country lay in the beautiful landscape of the village Cursdorf near Oberweissbach. He was born on the 16th of October 1723 as a son of a carpenter and a later lab technician. For that time a lab technician meant a person who was familiar with the production of medicine.

Above average talented Macheleid studied theology in Jena. It is known that he also visited lectures of the pysician Professor Georg Erhard Hamberger in Jena.

After Macheleid had finished his studies he worked as a preacher in the principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. Probable around 1755 he gave up preaching and started with the re-invention of the mysterious "Arkanum".

In 1757 he worked in Sitzendorf, a beautiful small village in the valley of the river Schwarza. There Macheleid tried to mix different local soils. A legend says that one day he had succes after an old beggar sold him special sand from the surrounding hills. Many days Macheleid tried to find the old beggar but he was not successful. So he had to find out by himself where the old beggar got the special sand. Finally Macheleid found the soil in a quarry near Koenigssee. The porcelain quality of the first experiments with the new soil was very good.

So Macheleid decided to ask the prince of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt for an exclusive privilege. The prince agreed and in spring of 1762 the factory in Volkstedt was founded.

Picture: Georg Heinrich Macheleid (1723-1801) Inventor of the Thuringian porcelain