Brezova

Products from this producer offered by Prague Art & Design

The person who stood at the cradle of this third Czech porcelain manufacture in 1803 was the Weimar businessman named Bedřich Höcke, related to the Thuringian family of Greiner that owned large number of porcelain manufactures. Höcke was thus able to draw all the necessary technological know-how from them. Since the initial enterprise did not do too well, it was purchased by an Erfurt entrepreneur, Jan Martin Fischer, and a native from the city of Březová, Kryštof Reichenbach, in 1811.

The factory experienced an immense upswing under their management – both as the quality of the products and the artistic point of view were concerned. It was directly influenced by the contemporary Viennese production. Březová not only specialized in dishware and tableware but also in painted pipe heads.

After Fischer’s death the co-ownership of the company was taken over by his son Christián who earned credit for the further increase in quality. Since then, porcelain from Březová has been valued as the best one in Czech lands. It gained fame not only by its painted vistas and genre scenes but also reproductions of the 17th-century Netherlandish masterpieces. Březová moreover offered cups decorated with impressed biscuit medallions.

During the 1940s the porcelain manufacture was the first one in Czech lands to be allowed to decorate its products with copper print. Its production program came up with vases, washbasins, inkpots and, last but not least, porcelain sculptures. Very popular were both grotesque and romantic subjects as well as figures of animals and caricature figures inspired by the humoristic magazine Fligende Blätter.

In the last quarter of the 19th century, the artistic standard of the company’s production dramatically declined but it at least retained high technological quality. In 1918, the porcelain manufacture in Březová was eventually consumed by the concern EPIAG which associated all porcelain manufactures on the territory of, what was then, Czechoslovakia.

Ironically indeed, the Březová manufacture began to flourish again at that time. Its assortment of dishware and tableware still tended to historical styles, but there also arrived the field of the modern Art Deco sculpture. During the period after the Second World War, Březová produced luxurious small-series porcelain. In 1957, the factory’s designers Pravoslav and Jindřiška Rada came up with a design of a set intended for the World Exhibition in Brussels. Although the set was not produced on an official basis, it was offered in the shops of the Dílo (Werke) association. In 1958 the modern form entitled “Tosca”, generally attributed to the director Němeček, became part of the factory’s production. After several re-organizations, Březová turned into a solo porcelain manufacture under the wings of the departmental enterprise Karlovarský porcelán (Carlsbad Porcelain). In 1960, the production of the factory was added with the Němeček-attributed series entitled “Ivana” along with the famed “Elka”, designed by Jaroslav Ježek, and the two were presented at the Milano Triennial. During the next years, Ježek’s series entitled “Nefertiti” and “Louise” also became part of the company’s portfolio.