The site of our romantic dinner...

Main village square of Meissen

Looking stunning as the light was changing, Jana and I found a little
restaurant off the square, and settled in for quite the romantic
dinner, candlelight and all.... Ha!

Our local cuisine treat of the night was tasting the early harvest
wine (pulled out of the barrels before it is fully fremented, so it is
really fruity, unrefined, and has a little bubble to it)... Served
with a fresh fluffy quiche -like dish. Quite delightful, (Jana will
have to fill in the German names later,she I'd fast asleep right now!).

Cobblestone road

We amazingly found parking along this quaint little street, and walked
into the main square in search of dinner...

Touring the porcelain factory, we sure worked up an appetite!

After the porcelain factory, we headed into the town of Meissen
proper. Formerly the capital of saxony (before Dresden), it had the
requisite castle and cute town square.

The traditional rose pattern...

After we were thoroughly saturated by the beauty in the museum, we
were dumped into the gift shop and got to see appreciate the value of
all the fine craftsmanship! Woah.

Mom, this pattern particulary jumped out as being one you would
love... (but don't get your heart set on the full tea set, it was a
mere 250 € per cup and saucer... I didn't quite make that much lady
year! Ha.)

I mean really!

Not my style, but pretty gorgeous!

More amazing porcelain pieces!

Every bit of hand craftsmanship kept running through my head while I
was looking at these pieces.

Next up the Porcelain museum

After impressing upon the visitors the craftsmanship of the work... We
were shuffled into the museum displaying an overwhelming amount of
gorgeous porcelain pieces, many of which were mindboggling after
learning about the process of how they were made! Mom, and Aunties...
Y'all were with me in spirit, as I know how much you would have
enjoyed drooling over these luxurious items!!

Demo room #4

The final demo room showed the process of hand-painting all the finer
details on the pieces after they had gone through an initial glaze
firing. This included the multiple layers of flowers, figure details,
and the addition of the hold and silver trims... Each individudl color
of which needed to be added and cured, or fired in some cases,
individually. Needless to say, after the little demo tour, jana and I
were both pretty overwhelimngly impressed with the fine craftsmanship
of the Meissen porcelain.

Demo room #3

The next lady showed the techniques for hand painting the traditional
designs on the pieces, as well as the underpainting for more complex
designs. At this phase, the pieces have been fired once, and are
sometimes sent through an additional firing to set the underpainting.

Demo room #2

The lady in the second demo room showed the assembly techniques for
the porcelain pieces. Each piece of Meissen porcelain is hand
assembled, and individual workers add the unique details to the pieces
before being fired (fingers, face details, handles, flowers, Etc...
Some of which are cast from molds, and others are created free-hand).

Demo room 1

After an informative movie about Meissen porcelain, we moved into demo
room #1. The dude demo'd how all the porcelain for ALL Meissen pieces
is still hand spun. It is formed into cones, then pressed into one of
the hundreds of thousands of molds that the factory houses. He showed
examples of figurines which are made from dozens of different
pieces... And even gave Jana and I each a baby head after we chatted
him up. I think he was just excited to see girls under the age of 60!
Ha. (definitely a grey haired tour bus destination, but interesting
none the less)

Off to the next castle town...

Back in the car, we drove a few towns over to Meissen, the European
home of fine porcelain... And embarked on a tour if the factory and
porcelain museum.