JÖRG WOLTMANN poses as you might expect from someone who has spent his whole life making decisions without much hesitation: upright, focused, with no props other than the porcelain itself. The new black-and-white photographs for the Royal Porcelain Manufactory Berlin’s Black Edition show him pared back to the essentials, fitting for a man who knew even as a child that the special-occasion china was different: he didn’t have to dry it afterwards.
The anecdote is typical of Woltmann. He recounts major business ventures with the same matter-of-factness as his childhood memories. At 17, he founded his first company; at 28, he sold it and, as he puts it, bought himself a fine car, a fine watch and his first set of KPM porcelain. When the Berlin Senate wanted to privatise the manufacturer, which was on the brink of insolvency, Woltmann was tasked with overseeing the transaction on behalf of his bank. But when KPM faced insolvency in 2005, he decided to take it over, despite his advisers’ warnings. In February 2006, he bought KPM, not as a business decision, he says, but as a matter of the heart.
Twenty years on, the banker has become the sole owner of one of the last luxury brands of its kind with a global presence, a company that had previously belonged to seven kings and emperors. Above all, the pace has changed: new partnerships, social media, the coffee-to-go cup and ties to the automotive industry that began in 2009 with Ferdinand Piëch and continue today through a collaboration with Bugatti CEO Mate Rimac.
Woltmann does not describe curiosity, the theme of this issue, as a management technique, but as something innate, alongside the Prussian virtues he strives to embody. The Black Edition, too, grew out of the same curiosity and an instinct for the zeitgeist. Woltmann had noticed black porcelain appearing on cookery programmes, so he created a black version of Kurland, the company’s best-selling range for more than two hundred years. Not a departure from KPM’s classic aesthetic, he says, but a complement to it. He likes wearing black anyway; it is inherently elegant. You believe him immediately.
CREDITS
Photography by ALEXANDER KILIAN
Styling by ANTONIA DIPNER
Kreativdirektion ANTONIA DIPNER
Creative Production JOHANNA ERDL
Hair & Make-Up SYDNEY RAAB
Photo Assistant BEN MÖNKS
Production Assistant RUBY STEIN
Production Assistant RUBY STEIN
Location STUDIOBERLIN