Tang and Napoleon

Jeff Wilson · 03 Jul 2009, 02:13 · from 2009-July.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:13:03 -0500
Subject: (urth) Tang and Napoleon
In-Reply-To: <NGECKNKNFCCKJFJGAFLHCEIIDNAA.stephenhoy at yahoo.com>
References: <NGECKNKNFCCKJFJGAFLHCEIIDNAA.stephenhoy at yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <4A4D692F.5090109 at io.com>

Stephen Hoy wrote:
> Another word or two about porcelain. It's formed from a hard clay paste
> heated to an extreme temperature.
> 
> 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.

Janet Gleeson's _The Arcanum_ has the latest, greatest historical 
details of the story., with a summary on the page below

	http://www.amazon.com/Arcanum-Extraordinary-True-Story/dp/0446674842

Bottger the alchemist died from inhaling too many fumes in the few short 
years of his employ/captivity by the Augustus the Strong, but due to 
lots of graft and corruption, lack of limited liability entities, and 
the preindustrial counterpart to industrial espionage, nobody really 
made a fortune on it other than Augustus, who did merely okay 
considering he was a king to start with and lost half his domain partway 
through the affair.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >

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