Semidiaphanam Tremuli Narcissuli Ideam Lacteam: Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651–1708) and His Determined Search for the Porcelain Principle

With this contribution, an attempt is being made to chart the timeline of the invention of the European hard‐paste porcelain based on historical documents. They were evaluated to trace the development lines from Tschirnhaus's early experiments with burning mirrors and lenses in the 1680s to finding ‘wax porcelain’ around 1694 to the coincidental origination of red fine stoneware (‘jasper porcelain’) in 1706, and finally, to the targeted invention of white calcareous porcelain in 1708. It will be shown how the triumvirate Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651–1708), Gottfried Pabst von Ohain (1656–1729) and Johann Jacob Bartholomäi (1670–1742), together with Johann Friedrich Böttger (1682–1719) arrived at their successful invention. Traditional porcelain paste recipes were recalculated and compared to the chemical and mineralogical compositions of calcareous Meissen porcelain and contemporary Chinese porcelain of the Kangxi epoch (1661–1722).