Looking back over the two-and-a-half centuries that KPM has been in existence is like a course in art history: playful rococo succeeded by harmoniously proportioned classicism and effusively elegant Jugendstil, and finally the programmatic simplicity of the Modernism that found its centre in the Berlin of the early 20th century. This stylistic ebb and flow is likewise embodied in the designers that left their mark on KPM products. The list ranges from state master builder Karl Friedrich Schinkel, to tableware reformer Trude Petri, to Italian design master Enzo Mari, who came to the company on the Spree River in the mid- 1990s as artistic director and left behind a service called Berlin as calling card. Ever since Prussian King Friedrich II acquired what was at the time a state-of-the-art workshop from a Berlin merchant in the mid-18th century, the brand with the blue sceptre has remained true to its craftsmanship tradition (joined by only six other enterprises worldwide). This is why, even today, each and every piece is unique. Porcelain manufacturers need a rtistic personnel for the design and painted décor of the pieces. These artists can be regarded as the prototypical designers and thus the trailblazers for today’s ideas of form. Sculptor Friedrich Elias Meyer, for example, created both figurines and a number of services in the second half of the 18th century. Whether a fatbellied coffeepot, sugar bowl or soup tureen, these were formal templates that still set the standard today. Among them, Meyer’s Neuglatt tableware from 1769 has – as the name already hints – an amazingly clear and hence modern look. Following a period of enthusiasm for antiquity and then the reign of commercially profitable historicism, KPM made a fresh creative start around 1900 by espousing the avant-garde Jugendstil trend. Witnesses to this period include the Ceres service by Theo Schmuz-Baudiss. In the late, Bauhaus-inspired 1920s, ceramicist Trude Petrithen succeeded at conceiving icons of the “Neue Sachlichkeit” (New Objectivity) that swept décor-laden Wilhelminian preciousness right off the table. In particular the Urbino service from 1931 masterfully combines lightness with severity, looking even more radical than, for example, Arzberg’s 1382 tableware (k p.90) from the same year. Enzo Mari picked up on the same attitude once again toward the end of the century.