Chinese Tea House in Sanssouci Park in Potsdam by Silva Wischeropp

About "Chinese Tea House in Sanssouci Park in Potsdam"

by Silva Wischeropp

About the artwork

This photographic image was taken with my Nikon D90 in October 2018 at the Chinese House in Potsdam Sanssouci.
The Chinese House, also known as the Chinese Tea House, is a garden pavilion in Sanssouci Park in Potsdam. Frederick the Great had the building built to decorate his ornamental and kitchen gardens about 660 metres southwest of the summer palace Sanssouci. The master builder Johann Gottfried Büring was commissioned with the planning. Based on sketches by the king, he created a pavilion in the contemporary taste of Chinoiserie, a mixture of ornamental rococo style elements and parts of East Asian architectural forms, between 1755 and 1764. The unusually long construction period of nine years can be attributed to the Seven Years' War, under which Prussia's economic and financial situation suffered considerably. It was only after the end of the war, in 1763, that the cabinets inside the garden pavilion were furnished. Since the building, in addition to its function as decorative garden architecture, occasionally served as an exotic backdrop for smaller festivities, Frederick the Great gave orders for the construction of a Chinese kitchen a few metres southeast of the Chinese House. After a reconstruction in 1789, only the hexagonal windows still recall the East Asian character of the former commercial building. Also under the influence of Chinoiserie, the Dragon House in the form of a Chinese pagoda was built a few years later on the Klausberg adjacent to the northern edge of Sanssouci Park. With these buildings, Frederick the Great followed the Chinese fashion of the 18th century, which spread first to France, then to England and Germany.