A PLAUE-ON-HAVEL RED STONEWARE BROWN-GLAZED COFFEE-POT AND COVER

The Plaue-on-Havel manufactory was established on the estate of Friedrich von Görne, a Brandenburg nobleman. The local clay turned red after firing and it was hoped that Plaue’s products would rival those of Böttger’s factory at Meissen. Görne tried to negotiate with the Saxon government for his factory to be incorporated as a Prussian branch of the Meissen manufactory, but he was not successful. The two factories kept an eye on each other’s products and spied upon each other. An attempt by Plaue to lure Johann Georg Melhorn from Meissen to Plaue went awry when a letter to him was intercepted in April 1715, resulting in Melhorn being sent by Meissen to spy upon Plaue. Melhorn reported back that Plaue was making red stoneware, but not with a black glaze.1

Unfortunately the Plaue factory archive is lost to scholars, making precise stylistic dating difficult (Friedrich von Görne’s successor, Wilhelm von Alhalt, threw all the paperwork relating to his predecessor into the river Havel).2 Horst Mauter suggests that Plaue was using black glazes in 1715 and brown glazes from 1717.3 A black-glazed coffee-pot of related form to the present lot is in the Gliwice Museum (Inv. No. MGI/RA/18).4  The Gliwice museum example has a double scroll support attaching the spout to the body rather than the curved support on the present example. It is clear that this Plaue coffee-pot form is derived from the Böttger original designed by Johann Jakob Irminger.  


1. Barbara Szelegejd, Red and Black Stoneware and their Imitations in the Wilanów Collection, Warsaw, 2013, p. 302.
2. Barbara Szelegejd, ibid., 2013, p. 303 (note 7), citing H. Köhler, ‘Steinzeug aus der Plauer “Porcellain Fabrique” (1713 bis 1730)’, in 800 Jahre Plaue 1197-1997, Festschrift, 1997, p. 63.
3. Cited by Barbara Szelegejd, ibid., 2013, p. 302.
4. Illustrated by Barbara Szelegejd, ibid., 2013, p. 302, fig. XXII.