Art

Panorama of the Army of the Cumberland

The National Museum of American History is not an art museum. But works of art fill its collections and testify to the vital place of art in everyday American life. The ceramics collections hold hundreds of examples of American and European art glass and pottery. Fashion sketches, illustrations, and prints are part of the costume collections. Donations from ethnic and cultural communities include many homemade religious ornaments, paintings, and figures. The Harry T Peters "America on Stone" collection alone comprises some 1,700 color prints of scenes from the 1800s. The National Quilt Collection is art on fabric. And the tools of artists and artisans are part of the Museum's collections, too, in the form of printing plates, woodblock tools, photographic equipment, and potters' stamps, kilns, and wheels.

Sugar bowl in the Egyptian style

TITLE: Wedgwood sugar bowl and coverMAKER: Wedgwood Manufactory, EtruriaPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: StonewareMEASUREMENTS: 3 1/8 in x 5 3/16 in x 4 5/16 in; 7.9375 cm x 13.17625 cm x 10.95375 cmOBJECT NAME: Sugar bowl and coverPLACE MADE: Staffordshire, EnglandDATE MADE: 1800-1820SUBJE
Description
TITLE: Wedgwood sugar bowl and cover
MAKER: Wedgwood Manufactory, Etruria
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Stoneware
MEASUREMENTS: 3 1/8 in x 5 3/16 in x 4 5/16 in; 7.9375 cm x 13.17625 cm x 10.95375 cm
OBJECT NAME: Sugar bowl and cover
PLACE MADE: Staffordshire, England
DATE MADE: 1800-1820
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE:
ID NUMBER: 65.92
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: National Museum of American History, Division of Home and Community Life
ACCESSION NUMBER: 272503
MARKS: WEDGWOOD (/) two inverted "V"s, impressed
This sugar bowl and cover made at the Wedgwood Manufactory, Etruria, is made in red stoneware (rosso antico) with a crocodile finial and Egyptianised hieroglyphic motifs applied in black basalt stoneware: a sphinx, the winged sun disk, the twin crocodiles, the canopus jar, the falcon god Horus, the Egyptian hunting dog, all adapted from sources of Roman and not of Egyptian origin. Josiah Wedgwood’s designers probably adapted the motifs from Bernard de Montfaucon's L'Antiquité expliquée et representée en figures (Antiquity explained and represented in illustrations), published in 1719. The original source Montfaucon used was a large bronze tablet inlaid with silver made in Rome, probably in about the 1st century CE, and known as the Mensa Isiaca of Turin. It can be seen today in the city of Turin’s Egyptian Museum.
Egypt fascinated the Greeks and Romans centuries before this sugar bowl was made in England. The Romans were great producers and consumers of things, and through their knowledge of Egyptian culture they “Egyptianized” their own villas, temples, and grand monuments with objects taken from Egypt itself, or made in imitation of Egyptian models. Through the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire evidence of ancient Egypt slipped into obscurity, even in Rome itself as the city of imperial grandeur crumbled into ruin. Not until the European Renaissance, beginning in the fifteenth century, was the earlier fascination with Egypt revived, and by the late eighteenth century the process of rediscovering ancient Egypt was greatly enhanced by travelers from Europe documenting and publishing their experiences. Designers, artisans, and manufacturers were quick to pick up on the mystifying motifs, hieroglyphs, and iconic remains from Egyptian antiquity.
Antico rosso (old red) stoneware was the name Wedgwood gave to this vitrified red clay. It was mined locally with the addition of calcined flint to improve the strength of the clay body and achieve a superior exterior surface suitable for turning on an engine lathe.
Red stoneware was first introduced to the Staffordshire potteries in the late seventeenth century when two brothers, David and John Philip Elers, opened a pottery in Bradwell Wood where there was a deposit of a suitable iron rich red clay. Imported Chinese Yi-Hsing red stoneware tea wares inspired the introduction of this type of ceramic to Europe, and several Staffordshire potters imitated these products, especially the teapots. Josiah Wedgwood developed a red stoneware and used it for his tea wares in the Egyptian style made in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and most often for his vases inspired by the ancient Greek examples excavated in Italy during the eighteenth century.
Further reading:
Bob Brier, Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
James Stevens Curl, Egyptomania, the Egyptian Revival: a Recurring Theme in the History of Taste, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994.
Egyptomania: Egypt in Western Art 1730-1930, exhibition catalog, National Gallery of Canada with the Louvre, Paris, 1994.
Gordon Elliott, 2006, Aspects of Ceramic History, Vol. II, p. 78.
Frank L. Wood, 2014, The World of British Stoneware: Its History, manufacture and Wares.
date made
1800-1825
ID Number
CE.65.92ab
catalog number
65.92ab
accession number
272503

Meissen cup and saucer: one of a pair

TITLE: Meissen: Pair of cups and saucers (Hausmaler)MAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Cups: 1¾" 4.5 cmSaucers: D.
Description
TITLE: Meissen: Pair of cups and saucers (Hausmaler)
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Cups: 1¾" 4.5 cm
Saucers: D. 5" 12.8 cm
OBJECT NAME: Pair of cups and saucers
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1735-1740, Meissen
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1979.0120.10/11 Aab,Bab
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 59 Aab,Bab
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “11” impressed on cup A; five-pointed star impressed on foot ring of saucers (former’s mark, possibly Gottfried Bergmann ca. 1709, d.1753).
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1941.
This pair of cups and saucers are from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in Germany, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
The cups and saucers were made in the Meissen manufactory but painted outside by an independent artist. Hausmalerei is a German word that means in literal translation ‘home painting’, and it refers to the practice of painting enamels and gold onto the surface of blank ceramics and glass in workshops outside the manufactory of origin. Beginning in the seventeenth century the work of the Hausmaler varied in quality from the outstanding workshops of Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland), to the less skilled efforts of amateur artists. Early Meissen porcelain was sought after for this purpose, and wealthy patrons of local enameling and gilding workshops purchased undecorated porcelain, often of out-moded or inferior quality, which was then enameled with subjects of their choice. Hausmalerei was at first acceptable to the early porcelain manufactories like Meissen and Vienna, and Meissen sent blank porcelain to Augsburg workshops for decoration, but as the market became more competitive they tried to eradicate the practice. It was a temptation for Meissen porcelain painters to take on extra work as Hausmaler to augment their low pay, and the manufactory cautioned or even imprisoned them if Hausmalerei activity was suspected or discovered.
The two cups and saucers belong to the same tea service pattern as the rinsing bowl (ID number 1979.0120.12). The exteriors of the two cups have enamel painted flowers in the style of botanical illustration (Holzschnittblumen) placed between prunus blossoms in relief. The saucers contain images of a musician playing a harp and a woman with a shepherd’s crook held in her right hand and a wreath in her left, both in pastoral settings and painted in the mid-eighteenth century in the workshop of Franz Ferdinand Mayer of Pressnitz Bohemia (now Přísečnice in the Czech Republic).
The images painted on the saucers have an archaic style belonging to the seventeenth rather than the eighteenth century and may come from emblematic personifications representing contentment and care of the land. Like the manufactory painters Hausmaler used printed material as a source for their subjects, and it is not unusual to see images that originated in the print workshops of the previous century. In an age before copyright laws numerous pirated editions of prints, print series, and printed books circulated through the hands of artisans who depended on the printed image for ornamental patterns, and for subjects of interest to collectors and consumers.
Tea, coffee, chocolate, and sugar were luxury products for early eighteenth-century consumers. Only the wealthy could afford to drink these beverages sweetened with sugar from silver or porcelain tea and coffee services. Many of the Meissen services were little used and have survived three hundred years because they were kept as items for decorative display in whole or in part. City dwellers drank coffee in the coffee-houses that first appeared in Europe in the 1650s. Lively institutions for generating commercial activity on local and global scales, they were also meeting points for intellectual debate and intrigue, but open only to a male clientele. Coffee was served in bowls imported from the port of Canton in China, or from much cheaper, locally made imitations made from tin-glazed earthenware.
The cups and saucers have the same raised prunus relief from the Meissen Manufactory, the same gold scrollwork and woodcut flowers as the rinsing bowl (ID # 1979.0120.12).
On Hausmaler see Ulrich Pietsch, 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: The Wark Collection from The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, pp. 43-46.
Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, ‘Graphic Sources for Meissen Porcelain: Origins of the Print Collection in the Meissen Archives’ Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol 31(1996) pp.99-126.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 538-539.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1735-1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1979.0120.10ab
accession number
1979.0120
catalog number
1979.0120.10ab
collector/donor number
59A

shaker

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
c. 1930
maker
The Hazel-Atlas Glass Company
ID Number
CE.77.546Bab
accession number
1978.0006
catalog number
77.546Bab

Scrimshaw Sperm Whale Tooth, 19th-20th Centuries

This large, highly polished sperm whale tooth is carved on both sides. The obverse is etched with a large full-rigged three-masted ship sailing towards the observer with all sails set.
Description
This large, highly polished sperm whale tooth is carved on both sides. The obverse is etched with a large full-rigged three-masted ship sailing towards the observer with all sails set. Atop the mainmast is a homeward bound pennant, and fifteen gunports are aligned along the starboard side of the ship. Below the sailing ship is etched in upper case letters "MONMOUTH-L.Is." (for Long Island). The reverse has a large heart with a keyhole in the center, with a forked pennant swirling around it marked "SARAH THE KEY IS WITH THEE 1864". Below the name "Wm. BAYLES" is etched along the same line as the lettering on the other side. There were no whalers named Monmouth in the records, and William Bayles does not appear in the New Bedford Whaling Museum Whaling Crew List Database.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
19th-20th century
ID Number
1978.0052.25
accession number
1978.0052
catalog number
1978.52.25

In Billets

Charcoal and color sketch on paper. Large wagon in foreground. On the right, sitting up against a building, a line of American troops and French women are stripping willow boughs for baskets. Team of mules on the left. Trees in the background and hills in the distance.
Description
Charcoal and color sketch on paper. Large wagon in foreground. On the right, sitting up against a building, a line of American troops and French women are stripping willow boughs for baskets. Team of mules on the left. Trees in the background and hills in the distance. A label affixed to the lower right corner of the drawing reads: "1. x16392/IN BILLETS. American boys helping French women strip willow/bows [sic] for baskets./Reherry." The sketch is affixed to a larger piece of cardboard.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1918
associated date
1917-1918
associated person
War Department
maker
Morgan, Wallace
ID Number
AF.25770
catalog number
25770
accession number
64592

A Rustic Genji (Inaka Genji)

Wood block, Japanese. Landscape with two kimono-clad female figures in foreground; men engaged in agricultural activities in background with waterwheel. Block used to produce left-hand print in a triptych with GA 03213 and GA 03215.
Description
Wood block, Japanese. Landscape with two kimono-clad female figures in foreground; men engaged in agricultural activities in background with waterwheel. Block used to produce left-hand print in a triptych with GA 03213 and GA 03215. 24 separate impressions were required to complete the image from 14 printing surfaces on eight blocks. This block printed impressions GA 03216.02 and .04( blush on flat surfaces of faces and ??--recto) and GA 03216.23 (black details on hair and clothing--verso). Both sides of block show some Japanese writing and residue of key print pasted down to guide cutting.
Location
Currently not on view
maker
Morikawa, Kokichiro
ID Number
GA.03216.26
accession number
22582
catalog number
03216.26

Oriental Scene

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
nineteenth century
maker
Le Jeune, Henry
ID Number
GA.14347
accession number
94830
catalog number
14347

Minton porcelain cabinet plate (Orders of British chivalry)

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
c.1873
ID Number
CE.P-322
catalog number
P-322
accession number
225282

Hank Williams, Jr.

Henry Horenstein photographed Hank Williams Jr., the son of legendary singer Hank Williams, leaving his tour bus. Williams Jr. (b. 1949) spent his early career singing his father's songs in his own style.
Description
Henry Horenstein photographed Hank Williams Jr., the son of legendary singer Hank Williams, leaving his tour bus. Williams Jr. (b. 1949) spent his early career singing his father's songs in his own style. After a 1974 suicide attempt and a mountain climbing accident in 1975, he revamped his own image, modeling it after rowdy southern rockers. Later he was considered part of the Outlaw Country Movement.
Location
Currently not on view
negative
1973
print
2003
maker
Horenstein, Henry
ID Number
2003.0169.074
accession number
2003.0169
catalog number
2003.0169.074

Village in Germany

Graphite, black crayon, sanguine crayon, and white gouache sketch. Village scene with traditional houses around a road. Several children, a woman, and a dog are in the road, along with two American soldiers and a horse.
Description
Graphite, black crayon, sanguine crayon, and white gouache sketch. Village scene with traditional houses around a road. Several children, a woman, and a dog are in the road, along with two American soldiers and a horse. On the far right of the sketch, several men are sitting together next to a fence. The sketch is done on dark gray wove paper and mounted on tan card ruled with decorative lines. Written beneath the sketch, on the tan card, is the following inscription: "An invaded village in Germany-/Zone of the American Army of Occupation".
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1918-12-15
associated date
1917-1918
associated person
War Department
maker
Duncan, Walter Jack
ID Number
AF.25704A
catalog number
25704A
accession number
64592

Meissen porcelain figure of a European bison

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
c.1905
ID Number
CE.P-285
catalog number
P-285
accession number
225282

Girl with Violin

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1883
publisher
Klackner, G.
graphic artist
Ferris, Stephen James
ID Number
GA.14533
catalog number
14533
accession number
94830

Painting -Seventeen Sides (Gauss)

Those making mathematical instruments for surveying, navigation, or the classroom have long been interested in creating equal divisions of the circle. Ancient geometers knew how to divide a circle into 2, 3, or 5 parts, and as well as into multiples of these numbers.
Description
Those making mathematical instruments for surveying, navigation, or the classroom have long been interested in creating equal divisions of the circle. Ancient geometers knew how to divide a circle into 2, 3, or 5 parts, and as well as into multiples of these numbers. For them to draw polygons with other numbers of sides required more than a straightedge and compass.
In 1796, as an undergraduate at the University of Göttingen, Friedrich Gauss proposed a theorem severely limiting the number of regular polygons that could be constructed using ruler and compass alone. He also found a way of constructing the 17-gon.
Crockett Johnson, who himself would develop a great interest in constructing regular polygons, drew this painting to illustrate Gauss's discovery. His painting follows a somewhat later solution to the problem presented by Karl von Staudt in 1842, modified by Heinrich Schroeter in 1872, and then published by the eminent mathematician Felix Klein. Klein's detailed account was in Crockett Johnson's library, and a figure from it is heavily annotated.
This oil painting on masonite is #70 in the series. It is signed: CJ69. The back is marked: SEVENTEEN SIDES (GAUSS) (/) Crockett Johnson 1969. The painting has a black background and a wood and metal frame. There are two adjacent purple triangles in the center, with a white circle inscribed in them. The triangles have various dark gray regions, and the circle has various light gray regions and one dark gray segment. The length of the top edge of this segment is the chord of the circle corresponding to length of the side of an inscribed 17-sided regular polygon.
Reference: Felix Klein, Famous Problems of Elementary Geometry (1956), pp. 16–41, esp. 41.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1969
referenced
Gauss, Carl Friedrich
painter
Johnson, Crockett
ID Number
1979.1093.45
accession number
1979.1093
catalog number
1979.1093.45

Meissen miniature vase: one of a pair

TITLE: Meissen: Pair of miniature vasesMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen: Pair of miniature vases
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 3⅛" 8cm
OBJECT NAME: Miniature vases
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1745
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1989.0715. 10 AB
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 213 AB
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “11” impressed.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art exchange, New York, 1942.
These miniature vases are from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
The miniature baluster-shaped vases have elaborate scroll handles and are painted in overglaze enamels with scattered German flowers (deutsche Blumen). European flowers began to appear on Meissen porcelain in about 1740 as the demand for Far Eastern patterns became less dominant and more high quality printed sources became available in conjunction with growing interest in the scientific study of flora and fauna. For German flowers Meissen painters referred to Johann Wilhelm Weinmann’s publication, the Phytantoza Iconographia (Nuremberg 1737-1745), in which many of the plates were engraved from drawings by the outstanding botanical illustrator Georg Dionys Ehret (1708-1770).
Other versions of these pear-shaped bottles have no handles and are decorated with Far Eastern patterns in polychrome enamels and underglaze blue. They were used for table decorations, and the visual climax of a festive dinner was the dessert, the course in which specially designed vessels in porcelain and glass supported artfully placed fruits, sweetmeats, jellies and creams, and for which the confectioners created elaborate tableaux in sugar that were later supplemented by porcelain figures and centerpieces.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower painters were paid less than workers who specialized in figures and landscapes, and most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage. In the late eighteenth century flower painters were even busier and consumer taste for floral decoration on domestic “china” has endured into our own time, but with the exception of a manufactory like Meissen most floral patterns are now applied by transfers and are not hand-painted directly onto the porcelain.
On the Meissen dinner services and table decorations see Ulrich Pietsch “Famous Eighteenth-Century Meissen Dinner Services” and Maureen Cassidy-Geiger “”The Hof-Conditorey in Dresden” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 94-105; 120-131.
On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meißener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp.368-369.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1745
1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1989.0715.10A
accession number
1989.0715
catalog number
1989.0715.10A
collector/donor number
213A

Camera-ready comic art drawing for Dotty

This pen-and-ink drawing produced for the Dotty Dripple comic strip shows the title character’s son rushing back to college, leaving her with empty-nest syndrome.Buford Tune (1906-1989) started working as an assistant to the art editor of the New York Post in 1927.
Description (Brief)
This pen-and-ink drawing produced for the Dotty Dripple comic strip shows the title character’s son rushing back to college, leaving her with empty-nest syndrome.
Buford Tune (1906-1989) started working as an assistant to the art editor of the New York Post in 1927. One of his first assignments was to revive an old family comic strip called Doings of the Duffs. After a brief hiatus Tune returned to comic strip production in 1931. He created Dotty Dripple in 1944.
Dotty Dripple (1944-1974) was a domestic humor-themed comic strip like the popular Blondie strip. Dottie was described as a typical housewife responsible for her children, Taffy and Wilbert; her dog, Pepper; and her husband, Horace. Part of the running humor of the strip was that Horace was often seen behaving like a child himself. Between 1946 and 1955 the strip was also sold in comic book form by Harvey Comics.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1966-09-12
graphic artist
Tune, Buford
publisher
Publishers Newspapers Syndicate, Inc.
ID Number
GA.22530
catalog number
22530
accession number
277502

Pitching a Song

At Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, musicians could hang out, perform and hope for a chance to be discovered.Currently not on view
Description
At Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, musicians could hang out, perform and hope for a chance to be discovered.
Location
Currently not on view
negative
1974
print
2003
maker
Horenstein, Henry
ID Number
2003.0169.111
catalog number
2003.0169.111
accession number
2003.0169

Nandina domestica

Japanese wood block print. No. 22 in a series of progressive proofs of a stylized group of leaves and berries from the shrub Nandina domestica. Designed by Tsubaki Chinzan, engraved by Kotaro Kido, and printed by Iwakichi Yamamoto.Currently not on view
Description
Japanese wood block print. No. 22 in a series of progressive proofs of a stylized group of leaves and berries from the shrub Nandina domestica. Designed by Tsubaki Chinzan, engraved by Kotaro Kido, and printed by Iwakichi Yamamoto.
Location
Currently not on view
engraver
Kido, Kotaro
ID Number
GA.03217.22
catalog number
03217.22
accession number
22582

Sèvres porcelain bowl (part of a service)

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
c.1831
ID Number
CE.P-804D
catalog number
P-804D
accession number
225282

Clichy Paperweight

In the 1700s, paperweights made from textured stone or bronze were part of the writer’s tool kit, which also included a quill pen and stand, inkpot, and blotter.
Description (Brief)
In the 1700s, paperweights made from textured stone or bronze were part of the writer’s tool kit, which also included a quill pen and stand, inkpot, and blotter. By the mid-1800s, decorative paperweights produced by glassmakers in Europe and the United States became highly desired collectibles.
Decorative glass paperweights reflected the 19th-century taste for intricate, over-the-top designs. Until the spread of textiles colorized with synthetic dyes, ceramics and glass were among the few objects that added brilliant color to a 19th-century Victorian interior. The popularity of these paperweights in the 1800s testifies to the sustained cultural interest in hand craftsmanship during an age of rapid industrialization.
The French firm, Verrerie de Clichy, began operation after merging with another local glassworks in 1837. The height of paperweight production at the firm was 1846 to 1857.
This rare Clichy paperweight features a five-petal flower over white threads on a latticinio (latticework) spiral ground.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1845-1850
maker
Clichy
ID Number
CE.67.237
catalog number
67.237
accession number
213138

Meissen red stoneware knife handle

MARKS: NonePURCHASED FROM: William H.Lautz, New York, 1959.This knife handle is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr.
Description
MARKS: None
PURCHASED FROM: William H.Lautz, New York, 1959.
This knife handle is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York collector and dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in Germany, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
The knife handle was made in red stoneware, a very hard and dense type of ceramic similar in appearance to the Chinese Yixing ceramics which inspired their imitation at Meissen. Red stoneware, enriched with iron oxides, preceded porcelain in the Dresden laboratory where physicist, mathematician, and philosopher, Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651-1708) and alchemist Johann Friedrich Böttger (1682-1719) experimented with raw materials fused by solar energy amplified through a burning glass. Success in red stoneware was an important step towards development of white porcelain.
The knife handle is of polished red-brown stoneware molded in a pistol shape. The blade is silver.
Johann Friedrich Böttger recruited highly skilled artisans working in other materials to refine the red stoneware products and associate them with luxury artifacts made from agate, serpentine, and jasper. Dresden court artisans demonstrated their virtuosity in the transformation of raw materials into artifacts that dazzle the eye, examples of which can be seen today in the Grünes Gewölbe (the Green Vaults) in Dresden. Such objects brought prestige to the Saxon Elector and King of Poland Augustus II in competition with similar collections held in the major European courts, the early eighteenth-century Kunstkammern that held a large collections of artifacts where the virtuoso skills of court artisans and artists became a public statement of the knowledge, taste, and wealth of a ruler.
On the Dresden Kunstkammer see the 1978 exhibition catalog The Splendor of Dresden: Five Centuries of Art Collecting.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp.24-25.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1710-1715
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1981.0702.24
accession number
1981.0702
catalog number
1981.0702.24
collector/donor number
1083

Paris porcelain pitcher (part of a service)

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca. 1820
ID Number
CE.P-576D
catalog number
P-576D
accession number
225282

Haberdashery Shop Figure

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1878-1888
ID Number
CL.65.1009
accession number
256396
catalog number
65.1009

Pink: Sho-yen-ji

Pigment used for printing Japanese woodblocks. Paper label with catalogue number.on folded length of red cotton felt. Tokuno described this as "apparently cochineal, but its chemical nature is unexamined yet. It is imported from China in the form of red cotton felt.
Description
Pigment used for printing Japanese woodblocks. Paper label with catalogue number.on folded length of red cotton felt. Tokuno described this as "apparently cochineal, but its chemical nature is unexamined yet. It is imported from China in the form of red cotton felt. For use it is put in water and gently pressed, a resultant pink-colored water is removed into a color dish, evaporated to near dryness upon a water bath or very slow fire, taking care not to dry it completely, otherwise it soon destroys its brilliancy. It is then kept in a cool place, protected from dust or dirt..."
ID Number
GA.03435
catalog number
03435
accession number
23218

Man Smoking a Pipe

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
GA.15703
catalog number
15703
accession number
94830

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