Beaker vase ca. 1713-20 Meissen Manufactory German This vase, one of the first pieces of porcelain produced at Meissen, embodies the qualities that made porcelain so desirable to Europeans during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when porcelain was still an unfamiliar and exotic medium. Its whiteness and translucency distinguished the vase dramatically from the earthenwares and stonewares that were the common ceramic bodies in Europe. The only true porcelains available to Europeans prior to the discovery of porcelain at Meissen in 1708-10 were those imported from China and Japan, and the attempts in Europe prior to this time produced an artificial or soft-paste porcelain that did not possess the qualities of a true, high-fired porcelain body (see 50.211.186).The events leading to Meissens production of porcelain as a result of the experiments carried out by Johann Friedrich Böttger (German, 1682-1719) have been well documented.[1 Böttgers initial efforts produced a den