The Porcelain Cabinet In The Tower Room Of Dresdens Royal Palace

For a good two hundred years the Tower Room on the piano nobile of the Dresden Residence served as a unique showroom for the electoral-royal porcelain collection. Here, alongside vases from China and Japan, King August III presented the finest products of his manufactory at Meissen, on gilded consoles against red-lacquered wall panels. In the bombing of Dresden in February 1945 the royal palace was almost entirely consumed by fire; as for the porcelain pieces, despite having been evacuated in 1943, the majority of them fell prey to plundering and destruction. Now that the porcelain cabinet has been reconstructed, some of the extant pieces - notably the spectacular 'Elements' garniture modelled by Johann Joachim Kaendler and two 'Dragoons' vases - can be displayed again. Additionally, ten silver gueridons serve as a reminder of the room's earlier function as a 'Silver Buffet'. This book traces the history of the cabinet from its origins in the 1730s to its destruction in 1945. It includes a comprehensive Catalogue section in which the losses from the Tower Room's holdings are presented on the basis of the documentation of the porcelain collection undertaken in 1941.