image of Johann Friedrich Bottger from wikipedia

Johann Friedrich Bottger

Johann Friedrich Böttger was a German alchemist. He was born in Schleiz and died in Dresden, and is normally credited with being the first European to discover the secret of the creation of hard-paste porcelain in 1708, but it has also been claimed that English manufacturers or Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus produced porcelain first. Certainly, the Meissen factory, established 1710, was the first to produce porcelain in Europe in large quantities and since the recipe was kept a trade secret by Böttger for his company, experiments continued elsewhere throughout Europe. Read more from Wikipedia →