Meissen in SOGO

If you have the chance to go to the SOGO of Zhongxiao Fuxing in Taipei, and if you like porcelain wares, please proceed to the 9th floor of the building. Had I not been in a country where they make me feel special for not being Asian, I might have felt out of place surrounded by those priceless porcelain items, but as it was, being foreign seemed to the the equivalent of "rich enough to buy our stuff", or at least "knowledgable enough to appreciate it".

So after my tea at the Wedgwood Tearoom, I walked around a huge isle of Meissen porcelain and glass wares. I did not know Meissen, to be honest, before going there. But as I was slowly looking at the wares in awe and silence, smiling - because porcelain makes me happy - a lady of the staff came to me and basically told me the whole story. She came to me as she was the only one in the staff that had some confidence in her English skills to dare use it. Said her coworkers thought I looked like a doll.

I was not really in a mood to speak to people much at the time, feeling depressed on a rainy day, one of those times where you feel so isolated, so I was kind of dreading having to talk back to her as she explained. She was, however, really interesting to listen to, and while she did tell me lots of stuff about Meissen in a super short amount of time, she did not really expect to have a deep discussion with me, so I relaxed. 

Meissen is the name of the first European porcelain maker. German porcelain. Probably coming from Asian techniques, as Asians had porcelain up much before western people did (btw. I am NOT writing a paper on this, so if you are more knowledgable about porcelain than me, please free to add up to it, or look up for information I might have gotten wrong, I do not pretend to know it all).

Their porcelain uses diamond powder to make their colors, by painting very very thin layers one by one, cooking it many times to accomplish both depth and color gradations. Have you noticed how there are so many porcelain wares that use dark colors such as Bleu Royal? Well with this type of paint, it is very difficult to make different shades. Only recent wares have more varied coloring and patterns using many colors at a time. In that store, they had 2 sets of the teacup and plate like you can see up there (picture from google) but in hot pink. That is their new color and that there were only two of those in Taiwan as of the moment.

Interesting fact, did you know that the Bleu Royal color on Meissen porcelain were used for the first time for Napoleon? That's why they called it so "royal" Napoleon.