San Francisco Ceramic Circle

Thursday, 18th September 2003 Meeting

"The Porcelain Table Services of Frederik the Great - From Wartime Troubles to the Splendor of Rococo Interior Decoration"

a slide lecture by

Dr. Samuel Wittwer, Curator of the Ceramic Collections at the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation, Berlin and Potsdam, Germany

The September meeting of the San Francisco Ceramic Circle will be held on Thursday, 18th September in the Florence Gould Theater at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, San Francisco. Entrance is from the main entrance. The lecture will start at 8.00PM.

About the Lecture: When King Frederik the Great occupied Saxony in the Seven Years War (1756-63), he discovered the possibility of making his own designs for porcelain at the Meissen factory. As a result, several large table services were made based on Frederik's own ideas. The motifs and forms of the porcelain are directly related to the decorations of the dining rooms for which they were made. After the war the king founded his own porcelain factory called KPM in Berlin in 1763. He immediately started to order new services to replace those from Meissen. Frederik's porcelain services are a perfect way to understand the delicate and intelligent compositions of Prussian rococo, which was the style of the royal apartments.

About the lecturer: Dr. Wittwer studied art history, European ethnology and history at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He worked as an assistant curator at the Pauls Eisenbeiss Collection of 18th century porcelain in Basel. Since 1999 he has been curator of the ceramic collections at the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation in Berlin and Potsdam, as well as archivist of the Berlin porcelain manufactory archives. He wrote his dissertation about the large animals made in the 1730s at the Meissen manufactory for August the Strong's Japanese Palace in Dresden. Additional publications include Meissen, Berlin and Asian porcelains and porcelain in the 17th and 18th century interior designs..

Next meeting: Thursday, 9th October 2003. Alecture by Catherine Hess, Associate Curator, Department of Sculpture and Works of Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, "Beyond Titillation: Sexual Imagery on Italian Renaissance Maiolica",