MEISSEN profits from euro crisis
In the first five months of 2010, the MEISSEN® Manufactory has achieved growth of almost 30 % over the previous year in its own boutiques in Germany. The increase in sales has been particularly marked over recent weeks.
Managing Director Dr Christian Kurtzke sees the Manufactory’s domestic success as being partly due to the process of realignment the heritage company has undergone and particularly wishes to emphasize the success of its latest innovations in the sphere of Fine Dining table culture (espresso and sushi gift settings).
A further factor benefiting the Manufactory is the sense of unease engendered by the euro crisis. “The public is increasingly discovering MEISSEN® porcelain as an alternative to conventional forms of saving and investing.” Above all, people are impressed by the long-term increase in value that MEISSEN® has been able to deliver in the 300-plus years it has been in business. “Our Limited Artworks are particularly in demand in our boutiques at the moment.” Customers are keen to be told in detail about production runs and the distinguishing artistic features of each limited-edition item, knowing full well that these are criteria with a crucial bearing on the piece’s intrinsic worth and hence scope for increasing in value.
A case in point is the “Chronos 300” mantlepiece clock from the MEISSEN® Manufactory’s current Tercentenary Collection: presented in a limited edition of 10 at the start of the year, it sold out immediately despite costing €100,000. The most recent transaction saw one of the clocks go for €130,000, a return of 30 % in but a few weeks. The Manufactory has now announced that a single copy has so far been kept in reserve with the aim of auctioning it at the end of the tercentenary year. The Managing Director envisages an increase in value of over 50 % within a year for this special edition.
That MEISSEN Artworks have great scope for increasing in value is corroborated by a Chefinfo-Finanzen-Spezial study dated October 2008 in which MEISSEN® porcelain ranks seconds as an investment, yielding average annual growth of 13.3 % - more than either gold, shares or property.
The Austrian economist Otto Schober, a noted collector and porcelain expert, confirms this trend: “It is nothing unusual for the value of MEISSEN® porcelain to rise as much as twentyfold”. MEISSEN® Manufactory artworks have been notching up top prices at international auctions for years now.
Top prices achieved by MEISSEN® artworks at auctions:
* In 2002, the Getty Museum paid the equivalent of €1.3 million at Christie’s for a figure by Kaendler.
* MEISSEN® record in June 2005, when a lifesize Pair of Herons crafted by the superbly gifted Chief Modeller J. J. Kaendler to an order placed by Augustus the Strong in around 1730 were sold at Christie’s in Paris for €5.6 million.
* In December 2006, a private European collector bid GBP 2.8 million (€4.2 million) at the same auction house for a Lion and Lioness which, like the “large-format animals” above, were modelled for the Japanese Palace in Dresden by Kaendler’s predecessor J. G. Kirchner.
* The highest bid ever for a porcelain figurine of some €650,000 was made at Christie's in December 2007 for the “Greeting Harlequin” from Kaendler's MEISSEN® Commedia dell'Arte series of figurines.
* Another figurine from the same series, “Mezzetino Dancing”, netted EUR 110,000 the same year at Ahlden Castle.
* Kaendler’s “Heart Box Purchase” figure group went for EUR 86,000 at Lempertz in May 2008.
