Massive Pair of Volkstedt Meissen style porcelain Macaw parrots

German, circa 1900.

Each with colourful plumage, modelled perched to the right on high tree-stump bases with applied foliage, bearing a maker’s mark to the base for Volkstedt, Thuringia (1760-).

Volkstedt porcelain manufactury sited in Rudolstadt, Thuringia, Germany, was the earliest porcelain manufactory in Thuringia. It was in business as Aelteste Volkstedter Porzellanmanufaktur, the "Oldest Volkstedt Porcelain Manufactory", which was integrated into the VEB Vereinigte Zierporzellanwerke Lichte, which in turn formed part of the Kombinat Feinkeramik Kahla. The factory had its origins in an official request made 8 September 1760 by the porcelain maker Georg Heinrich Macheleid (1723-1801). Macheleid had long worked in the glass manufactory at Glücksthal and had gained the arcana of porcelain-making by his own researches, apparently independent of Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus and Johann Friedrich Böttger, the ceramists at Meissen. He wished to open a privileged porcelain factory, making true hard-paste porcelain, intended to be sited in Sitzendorf. In 1762 the privilege was granted by Johann Friederich, Fürst von Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, a great patron of the arts and music, specifying that the manufactory was to be set up near his princely court of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, under his personal direction.

Volkstedt gained a reputation for its finely painted and carefully modeled porcelain figures that it holds for collectors today.