Tschirnhaus and Böttger worked at Dresden and at Meissen, in the German state of Saxony, for Augustus the Strong. Tschirnhaus had a wide knowledge of European science and had also worked on the search for porcelain for more than a decade. In 1705 Böttger was appointed to assist him in this task. After training as a pharmacist, Böttger turned to alchemy and it was his claim that he knew the secret of transmuting dross into gold that attracted the attention of Augustus. Imprisoned by Augustus as an incentive to hasten research, Böttger was obliged to work with other alchemists in the futile search for transmutation, but his work in this area ended in 1705, when he was appointed to assist Tschirnhaus in the search for the secret of making porcelain. However, one of the first results of the collaboration between Tschirnhaus and Böttger was the development of a red stoneware that resembled the red wares of Yixing, and a factory was established to make these wares at Meissen, in 1707.
A workshop note records that the first specimen of hard, white European porcelain was produced in January, 1708. At this time the research was still being carried out under the direction of Tschirnhaus, who died in October of that year. It was left to Böttger to report to Augustus in March, 1709 that he could make good, white porcelain and for this reason credit for the European discovery of porcelain is traditionally given to him, but unjustly, in the view of many of those who point to the essential role played by Tschirnhaus.
The Meissen factory was established in 1710, following the development of a kiln and a glaze suitable for use with Böttger's porcelain, which required firing at very high temperatures to achieve translucence (greater than 1350 degrees Celsius). Meissen porcelain was once-fired or green-fired in the Chinese manner and was noted for its great resistance to thermal shock; so much so that a visitor to the factory in Böttger's time reported having seen a white-hot teapot being removed from the kiln and dropped into cold water, without damage. Evidence to support this widely disbelieved story was given in the 1980s when the procedure was repeated in an experiment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Heinrich Schmidt, a designer from the Meissen factory, went on to establish his reputation in America when he joined the Knowles, Taylor & Knowles factory in East Liverpool, Ohio in the 1890s. Schmidt was the creative force behind KT&K's famed Lotus Ware, commonly acknowledged to be the finest porcelain ever produced in the United States