Unpublished XRF data on the composition of body, glaze and five enamel pigments on several Meissen porcelain objects associated with the so-called Hoym-Lemaire Affair will be presented. The objects relate to a scandalous event around 1730 that shook Europe’s first manufactory of hard paste porcelain. In 1728 the French merchant Rodolphe Lemaire managed to persuade Meissen to make copies of Japanese porcelain for sale as East Asian originals in Paris. The success of this dubious enterprise depended on the development of additional pigments that closely emulated the Japanese Kakiemon palette of colors. The painter and pigment technologist Johann Gregorius Höroldt supervised their decoration while he was also recording his other recipes for porcelain painting in a handwritten document preserved in the Meissen archives. In all cases the colorant chemistry can be related to special procedures introduced by Höroldt specifically for this purpose. We shall illustrate how the color formulations for these objects, designed to imitate Japanese Kakiemon porcelain, differ from those on earlier porcelain from 1723-24, as well as later (mid-18<sup>th</sup> century) objects. A surprising observation was the absence of antimony or tin in the yellow colorant. As an ancillary finding we have confirmed analytically for the first time that undecorated and unmarked Meissen porcelain in storage since prior to 1725 was decorated around 1730 and became part of the Hoym-Lemaire shipment. Our combination of XRF data with the complete texts of historical recipes from the Meissen archives underscores the role of the chemical sciences in elucidating art-historical details.

Role of archival recipes in interpreting the chemistry of early Meissen porcelain technology

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