The MOST FAMOUS porcelain factory in the Art Nouveau style

What is the most famous product from Teplice? Perhaps glass produced by AGC? Actually no, it is Art Nouveau porcelain. Perfect craftsmanship, modern Art Nouveau design and – as a period journal writes – “very attractive looking women’s bosoms that bear witness to a lively conception of refined taste”. All of this brought the Trnovany factory which manufactured vases, jugs, cans and figures called Riesner, Stellmacher & Kessel Amphora to the top of its area of industry.

Alfred Stellmacher, a native of Thuringia, came to Trnovany from Prague in the 1860s. At that time it was a village with a population of roughly fourteen hundred. The new entrepreneur did well at identifying demand, he hired capable craftsmen and from 1893 he regularly won awards from international contests and exhibitions: he won the highest award in Chicago, a gold medal in Paris at the turn of the century and also in Saint Petersburg one year later. The company pattern rooms and shops in Berlin, Vienna and Paris received around 95% of output for export.

In the 40 years during which Stellmacher did business in Trnovany, its population rose by approximately ten times. In the year of Stellmacher’s death, 1906, 20 more firms were doing business in Trnovany in the same field. Only a Catholic church was missing for this, the largest village in the district, to be promoted to a town – and one was already under construction. It is no exaggeration to say that Stellmacher turned a workmen’s village near Teplice into a self-confident town. No wonder that 20 years after his death, the industrialist earned a memorial in a place of honour in front of the building of the “town school” (nowadays the Teplice Hotel School). The factory owner’s statue was replaced by a bust of Smetana after the Second World War, but today this is also missing.

Alfred Stellmacher is buried in the cemetery in Novosedlice. With the exception of a few buildings from his original factory, nothing more remains today. There is still demand for his products though. Products by Amfora from Trnovany are valuable goods on the pages of antiquarian magazines, on internet websites as well as at auctions, and they are still a credit to the town.