BLUE ONION PORCELAIN

It was in the fifteenth century that miners founded a small community called Dubí, called so because of the deep oak forests surrounding it. In 1800 Dubí had 64 houses, 9 sawmills, and 3 mills. One of the mills, Unter Buschmuhle, attracted entrepreneur and industrialist Anton Tschinkel, who later bought it, in 1864 introduced the production of majolica there, and in 1874 china. The year 1885 had much greater implications for the proliferation of porcelain. It was at that time when the enterprise fell into the hands of the Meissen based company of C. Teichert and the production of an extensive assortment of porcelain sets began based on patterns and models produced in the Meissen plant. Porcelain designed in a late Baroque style with ornate elements of rococo decorated according to the patterns of chinese porcelain with cobalt inder glaze have become the traditional production program up until today.

So that for more than a century, the hands of predominantly women employees of the Dubí u Teplice Ceramic Works in Northwestern Bohemia have made complete sets of porcelain dishes and decorated them with the onion pattern.

The china which is called onion china is porcelain with blue inglazed decoration of a charming and continuously demanded design, even thougth this design has been used with little change for over two centuries. Its origin is closely connected with the beginnings of china production on the European continent, in the period from 1720 to 1739 the Meissen china manufacture gradually succeded in penetrating into the secret of the Chinese method of inglazed decoration painted with cobalt. At that time there originated a type of china which by its shape and decoration most closely reflected the European feeling for style of that time. Its discovery is attributed to Johann David Kretschmar of the Meissen porcelain manufacture.The ornamentation used, which has been marked from the beginning as an onionlike pattern, comes from the connection of stylized plants motifs on the background of east Asian philosophy but is adapted to the  European style and understading. The accustomed "onion pattern" has its origin in an erroneous interpretation of one of the motifs of the pattern depisting a garnet-red apple, the shape of which from afar looks like an onion. In spite of this, the idea of the "onion shape", is a symbol of fragile beauty, a symbol connecting the usefulness and the joy of spirit, a symbol of unity and world repute.

Although 250 years have elapsed since the time when the "decoration of generations" came to existence, the onion-pattern porcelain continues to fulfil the latest demands dictated by modern living. Thanks to the application of the technology of under-glazed decoration, the onion porcelain is environmentally friendly, resistant to all detergents, and suitable for use in microwave owens.

The porcelain with onion motifs is the true embodiment of tradition, simplicity, beauty and modernity, or, in other words, it is simply "the porcelain with blue blood", the porcelain which is in its expression unusually intimate, evokes family good cheer, abounds in qualities which have their appeal also in these times.

 Onion design                  About the joint-stock company Czech Porcelain