Red and black stoneware and their imitations in the Wilanów collection

The catalogue presents fifty-nine pieces of red and black stoneware - great rarities in Polish collections - and their imitations held in the collection of the Wilanów Pałace Museum. Among them is the largest Polish collection of red stoneware by Johann Friedrich Böttger, a famous alchemist and prisoner of King Augustus the Strong, whose remarkable success was to open in Meissen the first manufactory of porcelain in Europę. The study focuses not only on the achievements of European ceramicists, but also describes the beginnings of the custom for drinking chocolate, tea and coffee on our continent - culinary novelties which, surprisingly perhaps, not immediately found favour with the local connoisseurs.