Jakob Ziegler – industrial pioneer and self-made man

In 1828, Jakob Ziegler rented the municipal brickworks in Schaffhausen, which was in financial difficulties, and then built factory buildings and installations for the use of water power on the banks of the Rhine in Schaffhausen and Zurich. The resulting Tonwarenfabrik Ziegler AG was one of the most important companies in the Swiss ceramics and earthenware industry until 1973.

Born July 23, 1775 in Winterthur to Johann Heinrich Ziegler (1738-1818) and Verena Biedermann (1734-1801), Jakob grew up with two sisters in a wealthy and respected upper-class family in Winterthur. His father was one of the dazzling personalities of the society. As a polymath, he worked as a theologian, physician, chemist and entrepreneur, among other things. In 1778 he was one of the co-founders of the first chemical factory in Switzerland, the laboratory in Winterthur-Neuwiesen.

Little is known about Jakob Ziegler’s education; in addition to attending public school, he took private lessons. He gained his first professional experience in his father’s companies. In the 1790s he probably studied chemistry with Henri Struve in Lausanne. He was involved in the musical life of his hometown and in 1801 became a member of the Corresponding Association of Swiss Physicians and Surgeons as well as an extraordinary member of the Natural Research Society Zurich appointed. He was also active in school, city and commercial politics and from 1814 a member of the Zurich cantonal council.

In addition to his work in his father’s company, Jakob devoted himself professionally from 1797 to the production and sale of mineral water. Supplying glass bottles and ceramic pots to fill them proved to be a major challenge. Distribution was through local direct sales as well as through agencies. In 1801, such outlets are documented in the cities of Aarau, Bern, Burgdorf, Konstanz, Lindau, Lucerne, St. Gallen, Schaffhausen, Winterthur and Zurich. Jakob Ziegler also ventured abroad: in 1824 he opened a similar business in Paris with the French entrepreneur Bonjour, which flourished until the 1830s.

The natural science collection created by his father grew continuously through him. Jakob had his house in Oberer Steinberg in Winterthur raised by one floor and from 1823 made the preserved birds, minerals, fossils and physical instruments available to the public free of charge.

Jacob married three times. In 1798 he married Elisabeth Hegner (1780–1800), the daughter of the mayor of Winterthur. After her early death, he married Ludovika Steiner (1780–1836) in 1801, now calling himself Ziegler-Steiner. In his third marriage he married Fanny Pellis (1796-1862) in 1839, his family name was now Ziegler-Pellis.

Ziegler carefully considered the entrepreneurial expansion to Schaffhausen. His first industrial involvement with Munotstadt dates back to the time before the brick factory was rented. As early as 1818 he had provided a loan to the local mechanical cotton mill and established business relations with the foreman of the brickworks. Ziegler followed his experiments in the production of hydraulic lime, clay pipes, chemical vessels and cooking utensils with interest.

The topographical and structural conditions in the Mühlenen industrial area placed tight limits on founder Ziegler’s business plans. In 1831 he expanded to the other side of the Rhine in Zurich and built a building complex with its own water channel and power plant on Flurlinger Boden. A ferry connection ensured the movement of goods and people between the two production sites and in 1860 he had them connected by a wooden footbridge.

Jakob Ziegler paid particular attention to the development, production and marketing of machine-pressed and hard-fired line tubes. Favored by the introduction of a modern water supply and sewage system, the clay pipes gradually replaced the old, wooden Teuchel pipes.

Ziegler added several branches to his company. The production of pencils, the operation of a veneer saw, an oil mill, a peat press, a grain mill, a powder mill and a lime kiln including lime mill for the production of chalk have been handed down. In 1836 he even ran a cotton mill with 50 looms for three years.

Around 1838, Ziegler began collaborating with the Schaffhausen sculptor Johann Jakob Oechslin (1802–1873), who created remarkable works in terracotta for him. At the first world exhibition in London in 1851, the company received admiring recognition for an octagonal, more than three feet high, magnificent baptismal font in the Gothic Revival style. Jakob Ziegler-Pellis also had himself immortalized in clay by him.

Oechslin designed medallions, portrait busts and sculptures of famous domestic and foreign personalities. In addition to subjects from ancient Swiss history, such as a large-format Rütli oath, representatives of liberal ideas from culture and politics are mainly discussed. With the choice of motifs for its ceramics, Ziegler’s pottery factory has contributed to the revival of the Swiss past and the development of a national identity.

In August 1862, reports of a trial against 87-year-old Jakob Ziegler-Pellis filled the German-language newspapers. On July 17, 1862, while he was making powder in the kitchen of his home in Winterthur, an explosion occurred that killed the Veltheim maid Salomea Grübler. He was subsequently charged with negligent homicide and sentenced to four months in prison and a fine of 250 francs. As early as 1857, a worker at his factory in Flurlingen died during one of his experiments in powder manufacturing and the inventor was banned from production – to which he clearly did not comply. Ziegler died on January 18, 1863 before he could begin his sentence.

Following the principle of “report nothing but good things about the dead”, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported Ziegler-Pellis’s death on January 21, 1863. The accidental explosion and subsequent trial had overshadowed the last months of his life and his reputation. But this inglorious episode could not diminish his entrepreneurial achievements.

Thus his wish “to turn an ordinary brickworks into a tableware factory that would do credit to the fatherland in general and the canton of Schaffhausen in particular” became a lasting success. For five generations, he and his descendants succeeded in producing high-quality ceramics, mainly made of earthenware, at the Schaffhausen site. The range of goods from Tonwarenfabrik Ziegler between 1828 and 1973 impressively illustrates the technological and formal developments within European ceramics production.