Quality degrees
From the history of porcelain you have learned that European porcelain in particular was a material created on the basis of competing noble families and was a symbol of wealth, strength and power. Porcelain was not accessible to the common people. Rich decorations, gold, cobalt and elaborate paintings adorned the noble blue-blooded tableware. Probably the largest and most valuable collection of royal porcelain can be seen in England at Windsor Castle. This collection shows, among others, this Fürstenberg porcelain from 1773 as a gift from Frederick of Brunswick to his brother-in-law King George III.
(Royal Fürstenberg Porcelain from 1773)
This collection of more than 500 services and over 20,000 individual pieces brings together the arts and treasures of all continents and thus impressively documents the development of porcelain. But a closer look through the bullet-proof glass showcases makes the discerning porcelain maker freeze: all of these barely affordable porcelain pieces bear characteristics that today represent total unsaleability: Needle marks, burn marks, deformations and virtually every possible flaw in the porcelain that one can imagine.
One might argue what ultimately made porcelain accessible to the general public. Was it Philip Rosenthal I, who began a kind of "mass production" of decorative ware at Erkersreuth Castle as early as 1882? Or was it the American Marshall Plan, which came into effect in 1948, that enabled the Franconian borderland to start producing industrially manufactured goods in the first place?
No matter what the cause, 1953 marked the beginning of the heyday of the German porcelain industry! The cobalt blue ground stamps with swastika & co. had long been forgotten and, with the designation "Bavaria Germany", became a recognised subsidy good of American reconstruction aid. The devisor of this economic support was small and clear, the families were partly cross-related and related by marriage. The markets were divided up and the pricing agreed. Bavaria Germany grew to become a quality symbol for porcelain and refuted Franz Reuleaux's statement at the 1876 World's Fair in Philadelphia, "...German goods are cheap and bad...".
Until the 1990s, manufacturers were classified according to "scales" that gave the professional information about the quality level of production (from A to C, ascending). The "cheap tableware" of scale A was reserved for department stores and consumer markets. Only noble specialist dealers were allowed to sell the C scale. The fact that "C" was already produced for "A" at that time and what else was cheated and pushed behind the scenes should not be explained further here, but should be clearly highlighted as an example of a nebulous quality declaration.
One of the important founding fathers of this "know-how transfer" (New German: outsourcing) was probably Philip Rosenthal I, when he had "original Rosenthal tableware" produced for the first time in 1922 in Silesia at the Krister Porcelain Works. Hutschenreuther, Winterling, Seltmann and many other porcelain brands followed this example with great success.
Today we have the internet, market transparency and a noticeably lower demand. Whereas 30 years ago German porcelain factories were still able to export defective porcelain (2nd choice) to so-called "overprint markets" at tolerable prices, these channels are now closed. Countries like Italy, Spain, Turkey, Tunisia, Brazil, Iraq or Egypt now have their own porcelain factories - with German technology - and are no longer available as balancing markets. The A scale segment had long since been taken over by Romania, Poland, Portugal and China. German porcelain brands thus now had to provide an outlet for defective goods in their domestic markets. This was the birth of "commercial grading".
The quality classifications "mixed sorting" / "commercial sorting" / "commercial choice" (among others) enable the producer to add defective goods. This is not to the detriment of the buyer, as this quality grading is usually considerably cheaper than the advertised first choice. The buyer therefore decides for himself which quality level (grading) he will pay for.
We maintain that a "mixed grade" from a German manufacturer usually turns out better than one from a Romanian, Polish or Chinese factory. This is mainly due to the high level of mechanisation in the German production standard. The mixed grading of a factory with a traditional production standard definitely has higher tolerance values than fully automatically produced goods.
Therefore, every consumer should have "reasonable" price expectations. It should go without saying that a plate for 1 euro has a different quality profile than a plate for 10 euros.