The little manufactory, a baron and the white gold

The little factory continued for almost 100 years, from 1736 to 1834, albeit times were not always rosy. From 1815 onwards it repeatedly approached bankruptcy. However, during what for an industrial venture of these days certainly was a rather biblical lifespan – many ancien regime manufactories were aborted after few years – the little Manufaktur produced some of the finest Faience pottery of its day and age, capturing markets across the Holy Roman Empire and beyond. Erected around 1745 in the common baroque style of its age the adjacent chateau or manor house of Wrisbergholzen (see Figure 8.1), residence of Baron Rudolph (Rudolf) Johann von Wrisberg (1677– 1764), to the present day contains a Fliesenzimmer (faience tile room). Furnished around 1752, this room is covered top to bottom with almost 700 fine-lined tiles featuring popular motifs according to the Spanish and Dutch style, manufactured on the nearby industrial estate of Wrisbergholzen village, in what can only be called mass production. Most of the emblematic patterns found on the tiles drew on motifs depicted in Diego de Saavedra Fajardo's mirror for princes, Empresas Politicas: Idea de un principe politico cristiano (1640), probably from the 1668/70 French translation, a work contained within Baron Rudolph's private library, which subsequently made it to Princeton University. Saavedra Fajardo had travelled the German lands during the Thirty Years War (1618– 48) as plenipotentiary to several Catholic princes. A hundred years later his anti-Machiavellian Furstenspiegel still provided a template book for manufacturers in the remoter German lands. We do not know why the faience room was furnished the way it was, and what its purpose would have been, other than showing off. With his day job as a judge, Baron Rudolph spent most of his time as president of the Oberappellationsgericht, the Supreme Court of the Electorate of Hanover at Celle, or at Hanover and London, where he served as secret councillor to the Elector Georg of Brunswick-Luneburg (who also happened to be king of Great Britain). He also acted as the Hanoverian representative at the imperial diet of Regensburg (Ratisbon) in 1719 where he accumulated a reputation for defending the Protestant interest. Rudolph personally ordered at least two muster books (for tiles) for his library at Wrisberg, so at least he showed a personal interest and obviously some pride in his industrial venture.