The Herend Porcelain Manufactory is a Hungarian manufacturing company, specializing in luxury hand painted and gilded porcelain.

Products

Herend products are made from hard-paste porcelain using a mixture of kaolin, feldspar and quartz.

After cleaning, decorating and drying, the porcelain is first fired at 830 degrees Celsius. The fired pieces are then immersed in a glaze and fired again, this time at 1410 degrees Celsius. This results in white, translucent porcelain. At this stage it is ready for painting by hand and then, depending whether it has been painted with colours or with gold, it is finished off with one or two more firings.

Herend porcelain has won 24 grand and gold prizes in world exhibitions between 1851 and 1937^{[citation needed]}. One of the best known Herend patterns was presented at the London World Exhibition in 1851, the Chinese-style butterflies and flowery branches painted in joyful, lively colours. The British Queen, Victoria, ordered a dinner set with its gold medal-winning pattern for Windsor Castle., and so the pattern is named “Viktória”.

The Herend Porcelain Manufactory was purveyor to the Habsburg Dynasty and the aristocracy, both in Hungary and abroad. The factory continues to manufacture porcelain according to the traditional methods, in order to produce a consistent quality.