Harlequin ca. 1750–53 Höchst Manufactory The fourth factory in Europe to produce hard- paste porcelain was established in 1746 in the town of Höchst, which lies to the west of Frankfurt.[1] It was founded by the potter Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck (German, 1714–1754) and two business partners, who sub-mitted a proposal that year to the elector of Mainz, Johann Friedrich Carl von Ostein (1689–1763), in whose domain Höchst was located, requesting a privilege to make porcelain. The three men were quickly granted the privilege, which not only gave them the exclusive right to produce porcelain for

Harlequin ca. 1750–53 Höchst Manufactory The fourth factory in Europe to produce hard- paste porcelain was established in 1746 in the town of Höchst, which lies to the west of Frankfurt.[1] It was founded by the potter Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck (German, 1714–1754) and two business partners, who sub-mitted a proposal that year to the elector of Mainz, Johann Friedrich Carl von Ostein (1689–1763), in whose domain Höchst was located, requesting a privilege to make porcelain. The three men were quickly granted the privilege, which not only gave them the exclusive right to produce porcelain for a fifty-year period but also exempted them from paying duties on the most essential materials.[2] Löwenfinck hired workers with expertise in making both porcelain and faience, yet despite their best efforts they were unable to develop an acceptable porcelain paste, and the factory made only faience during its first three years of operation. The arrival of new workers in 1750 led to the successful production of porcelain by the end of that year, and regardless of fluctuating financial stability over the next several decades, Höchst was to achieve a level of artistic and technical success seldom matched by the other German porcelain factories in the second half of the eighteenth Höchst factory was typical of most eighteenth-century porcelain enterprises both in its reliance on the expertise of workers trained elsewhere and its consistently shifting roster of employees. The factory’s modelers, kiln technicians, and painters were constantly changing, and it was not uncommon for people in key positions to remain for only a few years before moving on to another factory. The factory employed four different modelers in the early 1750s when the Museum’s figure of Harlequin was made, and the identity of its modeler has been the subject of debate.[3]The Harlequin was conceived as one of a series of commedia dell’arte figures[4] that constituted the second s

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