Marked with a beehive indicating “Royal Vienna”
The history of Royal Vienna Porcelain:
Two workers from the Meissen factory in Germany took the “recipe” for Chinese hard paste porcelain with them when they headed for Vienna in the early 1700s. This sneaky duo shared the porcelain secret with Claude Innocentius Du Paquier and he began utilizing it in 1717 to make porcelain comparable to that of his German neighbors.
By 1744, Paquier ran into financial trouble and sold his porcelain manufacturing business to the royal family in Austria. Paquier’s early wares were unmarked, but when the Royal family took over, they began marking the porcelain with the shield mark, now known as the beehive mark mentioned earlier. The Imperial and Royal Porcelain Manufactory of Vienna became the most important porcelain manufacturer in the area and continued to make fine hand-decorated porcelain wares until 1864.
