Frederick the Great founds the Royal Porcelain Manufactory in Berlin. Attempts had already been made to establish a production facility for the white gold in Prussia's capital. However, both the wool manufacturer Wilhelm Caspar Wegely and his successor, the merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky, had to cease production due to financial difficulties, despite royal support. Frederick the Great, who had long wanted to own a company that produced precious and prestigious porcelain, paid a considerable sum for the takeover. He gives the manufactory its name and his symbol, the royal sceptre.

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The dining culture of the Prussian King

The king is his own best customer. For his palaces, Frederick the Great commissioned 21 services with up to 500 individual pieces and artistic table decorations. This led to the development of models such as RELIEFZIERAT, NEUZIERAT, ROCAILLE, and NEUOSIER. In terms of design and color, they are coordinated with the interior design of the palaces. Frederick's state gifts also frequently came from the manufactory and are found on the tables of European royal houses and in the Russian Tsar's court. High-ranking guests of the Federal President still dine today from the Rocaille service of Bellevue Palace.

KPM in Leipziger Straße 1763-1871

KPM Grounds Tiergarten 1871-1943

KPM 1955-1998

Peter von Biron, Duke of Kurland, commissions the Royal Porcelain Manufactory Berlin to design a magnificent dinner service. To this day, the collection KURLAND collection, with its strict classicist form and a relief of antique cloth hangings, egg bars and pearl rim, is still one of the manufactory's bestsellers and is probably the most important classicist collection in the world. Today, the KURLAND also adorns To-go cupsr and currywurst bowls made from the white gold. For larger state receptions, a KURLAND is available at Charlottenburg Palace.

Frederick William II. takes over the Royal Porcelain Manufactory Berlin after the death of Frederick the Great in 1786 and turns it into a technologically leading company - with Berlin's first steam engine and horse-powered glaze mills. The manufactory's economic fortunes soared.

Karl Frederick Schinkel, Johann Gottfried Schadow and Christian Daniel Rauch influenced the design of KPM porcelain. Their designs are no longer playful as in the Rococo period, but are based on antique forms with clear contours and harmonious proportions. The Prinzessinnengruppe based on a design by Johan Gottfried Schadow. The elaborately crafted statue made up of 88 individual parts depicts Crown Princess Luise of Prussia and her sister Friederike. The Schinkel basket by Karl Frederick Schinkel, which is still in production today, is part of a service ordered by Frederick Wilhelm III for the wedding of his eldest daughter.

With Frederick William IV, a lover of the fine arts became Prussian King and owner of KPM Berlin. The "Romantic on the Throne" ordered new editions of the Rococo collections from the manufactory, which Frederick the Great had already commissioned.

KPM Berlin opens its first store. To this end, the manufactory's warehouse is being converted into a representative sales gallery with display cases, shelves and shop windows.

KPM Berlin has to give way to the construction of the Prussian Parliament and leave its location near Potsdamer Platz. It moves to the edge of the Tiergarten, which brings a great advantage: the new production facility with a modern ring chamber furnace is located directly on the Spree and can be reached by ship for transport. From 1878, the Chemisch-Technische Versuchsanstalt (Chemical-Technical Testing Institute) is attached to the manufactory, with whose help the manufactory can decisively expand its repertoire of shapes and colors and produce innovations such as a novel porcelain mass, underglaze colors and colored glazes. The laboratory porcelains of the experimental institute were the inspiration for the LAB Serie by Thomas Wenzel.

The designers of KPM Berlin are turning away from historicism and moving on to flowing, asymmetrical and organic forms. The CERES service by the artistic director of the manufactory, Theodor Schmuz-Baudiß, is today considered one of the most beautiful Art Nouveau services. It was launched in 1913 for the 150th anniversary of the manufactory.

Asymmetry and abstraction supersede the strict forms of the previous Bauhaus era. In the 1990s, the collaboration with the Italian designer Enzo Mari resulted in a series of slender vases with square stainless steel feet and the BERLIN collection, which won the iF Design Award and featured concave and convex flags.

With the abdication of the Hohenzollern dynasty, the Royal Porcelain Manufactory becomes the Berlin State Porcelain Manufactory. Under its director Günther von Pechmann, chairman of the Deutscher Werkbund, the ideas of New Objectivity influence the work of KPM Berlin. The age of sweeping ornamentation is over, less is more. Gerhard Marcks, Marguerite Friedländer, Trude Petri and Siegmund Schütz, among others, leave their mark on porcelain design at the manufactory. Trude Petri's URBINO dinner service is created in 1929. Petri's design is based on the most perfect of all shapes: the sphere. URBINO was awarded the Grand Prix at the Paris World Exhibition in 1937 and is now a permanent exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Trude Petri's design also dates from this period ARKADIAwhose simple form Siegfried Schütz - inspired by Greek mythology - decorated with medallions made of biscuit porcelain . The vase shape HALLE by Marguerite Friedlaender from 1931 also follows the design ideals of New Objectivity and is a harmonious symbiosis of the geometric spheres and cones.

After several privatization attempts, the Berlin banker Jörg Woltmann takes over the Royal Porcelain Manufactory Berlin as sole shareholder. Woltmann determines the reorientation of the tradition-steeped company and accompanies the manufactory to this day.

Head designer Thomas Wenzel draws inspiration from the manufactory's former laboratory porcelain and creates the LAB series - not a classic multi-piece service, but a range of multifunctional and minimalist products for the modern kitchen laboratory. A glossy glazed top and a matt biscuit porcelain underside give the pieces a special tactile effect. In addition to plates, bowls and mugs, the LAB family also includes spice mills, mortars and a porcelain coffee filter. Each family member can be recognized not only by the timeless design language, but also by the chrome-green stamp mark and the lettering "BERLIN".

KPM Berlin is initiating a collaboration with the artist Stefan Marx, bringing together contemporary art and traditional craftsmanship. Confirmed by the resonance, the manufactory has since regularly entered into a creative exchange with contemporary artists and designers and launched limited editions and products under the label KPM+.

The KPM To-go cup is considered a symbol of a living symbiosis of tradition and zeitgeist, style and environmental awareness and is the most commercially successful product since the manufactory was founded.