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Meissen ornamental
Meissen Porzellan, Kollektion Meisterstücke
Designers Otto Drögsler and Jörg Ehrlich have been working together and for various international brands for twenty years. In 2009 they founded their own womenswear label, Odeeh — a tribute to cheerful patterns, high-quality fabrics and cuts in rare studio quality. Since 2017 they have been responsible for the creative management of Meissen, Germany’s oldest porcelain manufactory. With the rebuilding of design and creative competence within the company, which began last year, the manufactory is returning to a concept of in-house product development in a new form.
And this double business you have with Meissen — is it an exception, or do you see yourself as creative consultants on the one hand and fashion designers on the other?
We are creative directors. We accompany the company in the project development, as far as new projects are concerned, but also in the presentation, that’s what we believe Meissen has been forgotten for some time. One could have thought one were so great that people understand the products themselves, but these things need an extreme stage.
The network for Meissen is such a big part of our work for the manufactory, it’s not that we personally design new products, but that we try to land people who work for Meissen and then use their work to expand the network for them.
How did you analyze that to get to a creative concept?
We have a very minimalist approach here in Germany. Everything is always tainted with a different way of thinking, and you don’t really present yourself to the outside world. In the case of Meissen, we went to the archives and looked into the understanding of where the manufactory comes from — from the Baroque period. And that’s how we defined this concept of modern opulence, which now represents a kind of guideline. We try to play an anti-minimalist handwriting, to say, it can do more, a vase doesn’t have to stand alone, it can also be good with flowers...
... Ornament is not a crime ...
...exactly, ornament is not a crime. There is also a change there, a new openness for it is emerging.
