After Heinrich Count von Brühl had been promoted to cabinet minister of Augustus III and had become director of the Meissen Manufactory in 1733, he commissioned the largest and most splendid service the manufactory had ever produced in 1736. The legendary "Schwanenservice" comprise more than three thousand individual items and took five years to manufacture. The modellers Johann Joachim Kaendler and Johann Gottfried Eberlein were commissioned with the design and the modelling.