Pirkenhammer

Pirkenhammer is a porcelain manufactory founded in 1803 in the village of Pirkenhammer near Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary) in Bohemia, and it continues operating today in the settlement now known as Březová. It is counted among the oldest porcelain concerns on Czech soil. Its name matters to pipe history because, in its founding years, it produced tobacco pipes alongside tableware; over the following two centuries, however, its product range was largely centered on table and decorative porcelain.

Founding and Chain of Ownership

The manufactory's founder, Friedrich Höcke, was a potter of Thuringian origin; records indicate he built two kilns and, with Thuringian workers he brought in, made both tableware and pipes. The business was known by its founder's name in its early years. Höcke is reported to have leased out the factory in 1806 and transferred it a few years later. The business was taken over by Johann Martin Fischer of Erfurt and a partner surnamed Reichenbach; the factory came to be known during this period as Fischer & Reichenbach. Sources give the year of the change of hands as anywhere between 1811 and 1822; the year the porcelain production privilege was obtained is given as 1822.

Fischer died in 1824; the business was run for a time by his widow, Sophie Friederike, and then passed to his son, Christian Fischer. When the partner withdrew from the business in 1846, the factory was gathered wholly under Christian Fischer. In 1853 the business was left to Christian Fischer's son-in-law, Ludwig von Mieg, and in later years it was known as Fischer & Mieg. The manufactory's distinguishing mark, the crossed-hammers stamp, is said to take its name from the village's blacksmithing past and is still in use today.

Products and Reputation

From the 1820s, Pirkenhammer was regarded as the finest porcelain producer in Bohemia. Its catalog included tableware decorated with landscape and floral motifs, vases, candlesticks, and, later, figurines and thin porcelain plaques that showed an image when held to the light (lithophanes). The business became the first Czech factory to receive permission for copperplate-print decoration in 1829. Medals won at international exhibitions cemented its reputation; the most cited is the gold medal won at the 1839 Vienna exhibition.

The porcelain pipe of the early period is a product shaped by the nature of the material. Because porcelain, unlike clay pipes, is not porous, it calls for a water chamber to collect condensing moisture and a long stem. For this reason the porcelain pipe type that became widespread in Central Europe was known more for its painted surface than for its smoking qualities. The German branch of the same tradition includes the early bowls of the Meissen Porcelain manufactory.

The Twentieth Century and After

After the First World War, the business became part of EPIAG, a joint-stock company that gathered the region's porcelain factories under one roof; the year it joined is given in sources as anywhere between 1918 and 1920. Following the Second World War, Pirkenhammer was nationalized along with the 1945 nationalization of Czechoslovakia's porcelain factories; it was successively folded into the Starorolský Porcelán and Karlovarský Porcelán structures and served as a research-and-development center. After 1989 it was privatized, and production went through an interrupted period. In 2006, with the appointment of designer Alexey Narovlyansky to lead the operation, a new product line was created. The manufactory operates today in Březová under the name Manufaktura Pirkenhammer.