# dresden china exhibit *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 30 Jun 2009* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Ashley Crill *30 Jun 2009, 23:09* > Dresden china lays claim to being the first European hard paste porcelain. > The story goes that an apothecary and his alchemist assistant reverse > engineered the secret of hard paste porcelain, a secret which had been the > exclusive province of the Middle Kingdom since the Tang dynasty. The > apothecary died before the Meissen factory went into production, so the > apothecary wound up with most of the personal profits. Wolfe doesn't mention > this factoid in Peace, but it's a curious background item not much different > from the Tilly/Smart partnership. If you're interested in early German porcelain I highly recommend the Dixon Gardens & Gallery in Memphis. They have a great collection of porcelain and pewter from Germany as well as a beautiful collection of American Impressionist paintings. ---