Writing utensils with a quill dish

• Stralsund faience factory, 1769;
  variegated ceramics, purple shading, scattered flowers casting shadows on their base in the style of 'teutsche Blumen' from Meissen; blossoms on soil formations in an oval conch, coloured blue, green, purple; edging in marked green and yellow with a winding inner strip in purple;
  height: 63 cm

Faience, named after the Italian city of Faenza, is a style of tin-glazed pottery in white. These products, which are usually decorated with high fire and enamel paints, are standard wares throughout 18th-century Europe. The foundation of the Stralsund faience factory by the merchant and banker Joachim Ulrich Giese in 1755 belongs in the later phase of faience production. The entrepreneur leases the factory to Johann Eberhard Ludwig Ehrenreich in 1767. Under his guidance it grows to become one of the largest pottery manufacturers in the Baltic region. Among the most magnificent pieces produced in the Ehrenreich period is this writing set comprising a quill dish, an open vessel for ink and sand, and the stylised figure of a woman, apparently moving, dressed in robes of antiquity and resting on her left arm.

Now lost, the left arm probably held the casing for a pocket watch. Johann Otto Frantzen paints the piece in 1769. Johann Ullström is the glazer. The figure is created by the sculptor Friedrich Rose.

The company files for bankruptcy in 1792 due to fierce competition from cheap English stoneware and an explosion in the powder tower close to the factory that severely damages the building.

Today the STRALSUND MUSEUM owns the lion's share of the approximately 1,000 remaining pieces as part of its collection.