Domestic Furnishings - Overview
Washboards, armchairs, lamps, and pots and pans may not seem to be museum pieces. But they are invaluable evidence of how most people lived day to day, last week or three centuries ago. The Museum's collections of domestic furnishings comprise more than 40,000 artifacts from American households. Large and small, they include four houses, roughly 800 pieces of furniture, fireplace equipment, spinning wheels, ceramics and glass, family portraits, and much more.
The Arthur and Edna Greenwood Collection contains more than 2,000 objects from New England households from colonial times to mid-1800s. From kitchens of the past, the collections hold some 3,300 artifacts, ranging from refrigerators to spatulas. The lighting devices alone number roughly 3,000 lamps, candleholders, and lanterns.
"Domestic Furnishings - Overview" showing 9 items.
Meissen bowl
- Description
- This rinsing bowl is part of the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of European 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 psychoanalysis 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.
- This bowl was once part of a tea and coffee service onto which were painted topographical scenes of Saxon places of interest. Featured on the bowl is the Königstein Fortress, built on the top of the rocky prominence in the center left of the image, which lies south of Dresden close to the river Elbe seen on the right. The fortress, which still exists, stands on an outcrop of sandstone sculpted over millenia by the waters of the Elbe, and it is situated in a region unique to this part of south-eastern Germany known as Saxon Switzerland, later to become a landscape fascinating to early nineteenth century painters like Caspar David Friedrich. The second painting depicts the Sonnenstein castle above the town of Pirna, which lies south-east of Dresden on the banks of the Elbe. In the sixteenth century Pirna flourished as a merchant town, and was a center for Protestant minorities seeking refuge from persecution in Catholic Central Europe. Bernardo Belotto/Caneletto (1721-1780), the nephew of Giovanni Antonio Caneletto (1697-1768), his pupil and assistant in Venice before leaving to study in Rome, painted several scenes of Pirna, but at the Meissen Manufactory both these images, painted in onglaze enamels, were after engravings executed in 1726 by Johann Alexander Thiele (1685-1752). Thiele painted many landscapes of Saxon sites, and among his pupils were artists who later developed what became known as the Dresden landscape school, active until well into the nineteenth century. The bowl is an example of Meissen’s use of sources from the work of contemporary artists, an exchange made possible through the increasing volume of prints supplied to the manufactory. (Marx, H., Die Schoensten Ansichten aus Sachsen: Johann Alexander Thiele (1685-1752) zum 250 Todestag, 2002).
- The bowl has a sea-green ground color, and the images in the reserves are painted in polychrome enamels. The interior and exterior gold scrollwork and foot ring frame the piece. The interior has another miniature landscape that remains unidentified and is probably imaginary, surrounded by elaborate scrollwork in purple and iron-red enamels and gold. When part of a tea and coffee service, the bowl was used to take the last dregs of a beverage before a cup was rinsed and refilled. It is likely that a service of this kind was not much used in a practical sense, but put on display for admiration. (See a milk pot from this service in Pietsch, U., Early Meissen Porcelain: the Wark Collection from the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, 2011, p.379).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1735
- maker
- Meissen Manufactory
- ID Number
- 1983.0565.43
- collector/donor number
- 893
- accession number
- 1983.0565
- catalog number
- 1983.0565.43
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Meissen teapot and cover
- Description
- This little teapot is part of the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of European 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 psychoanalysis 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 teapot is formed from red stoneware, a clay colored with red earth and iron oxide, and developed by Johann Friedrich Böttger (1682-1719) and his team at the laboratory in the Jungfernbastei in Dresden in December 1707. Vessels and small figures made from this material appeared at the Leipzig Easter Fair in May 1710, the same year in which the manufactory opened in Meissen, about thirty miles from Dresden. The teapot shares some characteristics with sixteenth-century Chinese Yixing stoneware tea vessels , but early Meissen red stoneware pieces were diverse, and many items designed by the court goldsmith Johann Jacob Irminger (1635-1724) followed the European style of contemporary gold and silverware, and in this case the Bohemian technique of faceted glass. This teapot is a hybrid of Chinese and European styles, and although it looks as though the many facets were formed by a glass cutting tool, the vessel was made in a plaster mold; a solid model of the teapot was made and the facets were cut into the surface. A plaster mold taken from the model picked up the faceted pattern, and red stoneware clay was then worked into the mold by a potter who very skillfully produced an even thickness of the material to make this very light little teapot. The handle and spout were probably made in separate molds and added afterwards. The surface of the teapot was then polished with the same technique used for polishing glass and stone. There is a crack around the lower part of the teapot, and the silver mounting was possibly applied to prevent the vessel from springing apart. The silver lid may be a replacement for one that was broken. The spout probably had a silver mounting which has been lost.
- It was difficult to produce consistent results with red stoneware. When fired in the kiln it required a lower temperature than white porcelain, and variation in the color occurred frequently. The decorative techniques seen here were slow to execute and expensive. Eventually, it became impractical to continue production of red stoneware alongside the highly desirable white porcelain. However, the earlier invention of this material was an important step towards the development of hard-paste porcelain.
- Pietsch, U. Early Meissen Porcelain: the Wark Collection, 2011, pp. 15-18.
- Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, 1979, pp.28-29.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1710-1715
- maker
- Meissen Manufactory
- ID Number
- 1981.0702.16ab
- collector/donor number
- 685
- accession number
- 1981.0702
- catalog number
- 1981.0702.16
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Meissen coffee pot and cover
- Description
- This coffeepot is part of the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of European 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 psychoanalysis 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.
- This pear-shaped coffeepot, reminiscent of metal prototypes, has a wishbone handle with a domed lid that has a pine kernel on the top. The insects and flowers painted on the pot are in the style of prints published after the original botanical and insect studies by the Flemish artist Joris (Georg) Hoefnagel (1542-1601). Joris Hoefnagel, who became court painter to the Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, employed his nineteen year old son Jacob to engrave the plates for the publication in 1592 of the Archetypa Studiaque Patris Georgii Hoefnagelii. After his father’s death Jacob Hoefnagel succeeded him as court painter to Rudolf II.
- Prints after the Hoefnagel originals were so much in demand among artists and craftworkers, that the Nuremberg publishers purchased the copperplates and produced several further editions in the seventeenth century. The Nuremberg printmaker and publisher, Christoph Weigel (1654-1725), produced another edition in the early eighteenth century, which explains why a visual source from the late sixteenth century appears on Meissen porcelain nearly one hundred and fifty years later. (See Cassidy-Geiger, M., Graphic Sources for Meissen Porcelain, in Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 31, 1996, pp.99-126). However, when this coffeepot was made in 1740 the Hoefnagel style of trompe l’oeil was about to give way to the fashion for painting sprays of German flowers (deutsche blumen) on Meissen porcelain. This development indicated the beginnings of a preference for decorative motifs with local significance that struck a chord with an awakening sense of German national identity. By 1740, when this coffee pot was made, Meissen had a large, well-trained painting staff run by Johann Gregor Höroldt. Painters tended to specialize in figurative subjects, fruits and flowers, birds and animals, battle scenes, landscapes, harbor scenes, all of which were part of the repertoire by the middle of the eighteenth century. This coffeepot made in 1740 marks the transition from early modern sources of imagery to contemporary sources.
- The seventeenth and eighteenth century expansion in the manufacture of consumer goods made more desirable and fashionable with ornamentation promoted the production of printed images and pattern books to which artisans could refer for their designs. The manufacturers of ceramics and printed textiles, interior painters and wallpaper makers, furniture makers, and embroiderers made use of these sources for surface decoration. When available, undecorated porcelain was taken into the workshops of professional enamel painters, the so-called Hausmaler or home painters. Amateur enamellers also painted white porcelain when they could acquire some.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1740
- maker
- Meissen Manufactory
- ID Number
- 1983.0565.49ab
- collector/donor number
- 797
- accession number
- 1983.0565
- catalog number
- 1983.0565.49ab
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Meissen plate
- Description
- This plate is part of the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of European 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 psychoanalysis 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.
- Underglaze blue as seen on this plate was a challenge for the Meissen manufactory’s laboratory. Cobalt blue is one of few colors derived from metal oxides that can withstand high temperatures without vanishing, and for several centuries the German stoneware tradition used cobalt pigments to ornament vessels and tiles. However, firing porcelain at a much higher temperature meant that the oxide became unstable, causing it to bleed into the glaze, losing definition in the design. The blue color at Meissen was not pleasing either, especially in comparison to the bright blues characteristic of the most prized Chinese blue and white porcelain so much desired in the West.
- The production of cobalt blue pigments (blaufarben) was one of the major metal and mineral industries of Saxony, so it was particularly frustrating to the Meissen team when faced with a problem that took many years to resolve. Mined since the early sixteenth century in the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) near Dresden, cobalt became a major source of blue pigments in Europe. Found combined with other metals and semi-metals – nickel, iron, copper, bismuth and arsenic – cobalt salts, after smelting and separation, were then processed into smalt, a pigment used by painters, and zaffer, a preparation used in enamel and glass production. However, neither of these pigments was suitable for underglaze painting on porcelain.
- So keen was Augustus II, the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, to have underglaze blue decorated porcelain that he set an award of 1000 thalers for anyone who met with success in securing a reliable blue color. For many years the metallurgist David Köhler (1683?-1723), a member of the original team at Meissen, worked on the problem. So did Samuel Stölzel and two painters, Johann Georg Mehlhorn (c. 1671-1735) and Conrad Hunger (dates unknown) who received 300 thalers each when they presented the Elector with underglaze blue porcelain of rather mediocre quality. Köhler improved the stability of the pigment, but when he died in 1723, and when feldspar replaced alabaster in the porcelain body itself, further difficulties arose that were finally resolved in the late 1720s with a fine blue pigment on a whiter porcelain body. (Pietsch, U., Triumph of the Blue Swords, 2008, p.22)
- This plate, produced in about 1740 when the manufactory had underglaze blue well under control, features the so-called ‘Zwiebelmuster’ or ‘onion’ pattern, probably introduced in this form in the late 1720s. It has long been assumed that the 'onion' pattern was a copy of a Chinese protoype, but it was a Meissen design with several variations based on Chinese motifs.(Pietsch,U., Triumph of the Blue Swords, 2010, p. 245). To ensure a consistent standard in the production of table services the ‘onion’ patterns were first ‘pounced’ onto the surface of the porcelain, leaving a traceable design for the painters to follow, a practice that continues at Meissen today.
- Meissen’s blue and white ‘onion’ pattern was immensely successful, and modified versions are still in production. Underglaze blue painted in imitation of Meissen porcelains were produced at many European porcelain manufactories during the eighteenth century, and they became the preferred domestic choice for those who could afford to buy them. Consumers still find blue and white pottery, porcelain, and china attractive and desirable for everyday use in the home.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1740
- maker
- Meissen Manufactory
- ID Number
- 1984.1140.45
- collector/donor number
- 1595
- accession number
- 1984.1140
- catalog number
- 1984.1140.45
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Meissen figure of a miner
- Description
- This figure of a miner is part of the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of European 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 psychoanalysis 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.
- Saxony’s miners held a high status in comparison to other laboring communities, mining silver, lead, copper, cobalt, and bismuth out of the rich Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) in the south-west region of the Saxon State. The figure seen here represents a miner in his parade livery with an axe carried over his right shoulder. On his hat the emblem of crossed mining picks is painted in gold, and crossed swords - just like the mark on Meissen porcelains - are painted on his belt buckle. Miners worked hard rock to get at the ores, with water and toxic fumes their constant enemies. Smelters and furnace workers who processed the ores also belonged to the mining industry (bergbauindustrie), as did the surveyors responsible for mapping the complex underground seams of ore, and the engineers who built and worked the machinery that kept the mineshafts open.
- The Meissen modelers Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775) and Peter Reinicke (d. 1768) produced the original figure for this and other mining subjects. Kaendler, who joined Meissen in 1731 after working for the Dresden court sculptor Benjamin Thomae (1682-1751), developed a baroque style and a scale for porcelain figures that successfully exploited the nature of the material. The mining figures were based on prints from a publication by Christoph Weigel of Nuremberg, Die Abbildung und Beschreibung derer sämtlichen Berg-Wercks und Hütten Beamten und Bedienten nach ihrem gewöhnlichen Rang und Ordnung im behörigen Hütten-Habit [The representation and description of all the mining and metallurgy officials and their subordinates in appropriate livery according to their customary rank and order]. Mining personnel wore these garments at the elaborate parades that formed part of the court festivals held to celebrate anniversaries, betrothals, and weddings in the European court calendar. One of the most spectacular was the Saturn Festival held in 1719 to celebrate the marriage of Augustus II Elector of Saxony's son, the electoral prince Friedrich Augustus, to Princess Maria Josepha of Austria, the daughter of the Emperor Joseph I. (See Watanabe O'Kelly, H., Court Culture in Dresden: From Renaissance to Baroque, 2002).
- It was the custom in court entertainments to decorate banqueting tables with figures made from sugar, and the design of these elaborate ornaments was the task of the court sculptors. When Kaendler took up his post as a modeler at Meissen he was quick to see that porcelain could replace sugar in this function. This figurine was one among many in a series that depicted the work of miners, and collectively formed a table decoration on this theme.
- The Meissen Manufactory uses the same techniques today to make individual figures and figure groups as it did in the eighteenth century. The original figure, sculpted in wax or modeler’s clay, is cut into smaller pieces from which plaster of Paris molds are taken. This miner is a relatively simple subject, but complex figure groups often require up to seventy separate molds. It is the job of the Meissen manufactory’s team of figure specialists to reassemble the figures from porcelain pressed into, and then released from the molds when still damp. The pieces are then stuck carefully in place and the complete figure group is dried slowly and evenly before firing. (See Pietsch, U. Triumph of the Blue Swords, 2010, pp. 61-67; pp.121-131).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1750
- maker
- Meissen Manufactory
- ID Number
- CE*65.387
- catalog number
- 65.387
- collector/donor number
- 422
- accession number
- 262623
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Meissen bowl and cover
- Description
- This covered bowl is part of the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of European 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 psychoanalysis 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 first pieces of Meissen porcelain were made from white clay (kaolin, a hydrous aluminum silicate) found at Colditz in Saxony, which was then mixed with alabaster previously heated and crushed to a fine powder (calcined). Then kaolin found at Aue in Saxony improved the strength and quality of the material, but the alabaster used to lower the melting point of the clays gave the early Meissen porcelains a slightly yellow cast. The problem was not resolved until feldspar (aluminum silicate) replaced alabaster (calcium sulphate) as a flux in the mid 1720s to 1730s, but better understanding of the firing cycle, with an atmosphere in the kiln chamber starved of oxygen, could also contribute to improved color in the material by turning iron impurities from yellow to gray-blue.
- This covered bowl was made from the early Böttger porcelain. You can see distortion where the rim of the bowl and the outer edge of the lid meet. The lid and bowl were fired separately, otherwise they would have stuck to each other in high temperatures, and the lid was too heavy for the bowl to support its weight without danger of collapse. In these early Meissen pieces such distortion was common, and some vessels display more extreme evidence with severe cracks and slumped forms. The high temperature required to vitrify porcelain requires special supports to prevent distortion during firing, and it is critical to design the shape of the vessels to ensure the porcelain body stays within the limits of its inherent strength. Many of the early Meissen pieces, designed by the court goldsmith, Johann Jacob Irminger (1635-1724), make perfect sense if made in metal, but were not always suitable for porcelain.
- A potter probably threw the bowl and lid on the wheel, shaping the two sections by trimming excess porcelain away when the clay hardened enough to hold its shape. Later, the Meissen potters shaped vessels into or onto plaster of Paris molds using templates to form the interior or exterior profiles. This technique allowed for standard shapes and sizes in the production of table services.The floral decoration, inspired by Japanese Imari porcelain imported by Dutch merchants during the seventeenth century, was modeled by hand and applied to the bowl and lid separately. Before the development of an enamel color palette at Meissen, unfired green and red lacquer and gold was applied to some of the early porcelains. In this piece you can see traces of these colors on the rose sprays, most of which has worn off the surface with passage of time.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1713-1720
- maker
- Meissen Manufactory
- ID Number
- CE*68.170ab
- catalog number
- 68.170b
- collector/donor number
- 655
- accession number
- 281777
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Meissen figure of a rhinoceros
- Description
- This rhinoceros is part of the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of European 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 psychoanalysis 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.
- This little rhinoceros, probably modeled by Johann Joachim Kaendler, relied on a much older source for reference. Few people had seen a rhinoceros in early eighteenth-century Europe, and this figure bears a close resemblance to Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut of an animal that was brought to Portugal in the sixteenth century. Dürer did not see the animal himself, but devised an image from descriptions, and possibly from sketches that reached Nuremberg in 1515. His rhinoceros became the visual source that artists and illustrators referred to for over 250 years, even though more of these extraordinary beasts were brought to Europe from overseas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Real rhinoceroses do not have plates on their bodies like the figure seen here, although they do have rolls of hide that might have suggested something like the armor plating depicted in Dürer’s woodcut and faithfully reproduced in numerous images of the animal after him.
- Before modeling this small figure later in his career at Meissen, Kaendler worked on an ambitious project for the Japanese Palace in the early 1730s to produce porcelain sculptures of imaginary beasts as well as the live native and exotic species held in the Elector of Saxony's menagerie in Dresden. Some of these works were life size, and many others over four feet high –a rhinoceros sculpted to the size of a large dog, after Dürer’s version, still exists. Elector Augustus II commissioned over 500 animals and birds for the Japanese Palace, but it became clear that porcelain was not a suitable material for large-scale sculpture. When fired, even after adjustments to increase the strength of the material, the porcelain cracked open or slumped out of shape, and it was not possible to apply enamel color and risk another firing. Understanding the limits of the material, Kaendler turned to the development of small-scale porcelain figures of animals, birds, and human subjects, many of which are noteworthy for their fresh and lively expression across baroque and rococo styles.
- Figurative sculpture in clays of many different kinds, have an ancient global history, and they can be highly informative items in our attempts to interpret cultures of the past. The invention of hard-paste porcelain at Meissen, and the work of the court sculptors employed in the manufactory, gave rise to a genre of figurative subjects that help us to interpret the court culture of European society much closer to us in time. The Meissen figures, imitated by other European porcelain manufacturers, influenced the style and repertoire of ceramic figurines, many of which are still in production today bearing a close or distant relationship to the originals.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1750
- maker
- Meissen Manufactory
- ID Number
- CE*69.82
- collector/donor number
- 514
- accession number
- 287702
- catalog number
- 69.82
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Meissen plate
- Description
- This plate is part of the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of European 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 psychoanalysis 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.
- Japanese porcelain prototypes had a greater impact on early Meissen porcelain than Chinese, a consequence of Augustus II Elector of Saxony’s preference for Japanese styles. This plate incorporates the two principle styles common to imported Japanese porcelains of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The Kakiemon style is represented in the top half of the plate with the “red fox and yellow squirrel” pattern. In the lower half of the plate the diaper pattern represents the Imari style. The line that divides the two styles refers to a Japanese leaf-shaped dish in the Dresden porcelain collection with foliage and floral designs painted in underglaze blue.
- Arita, in the Hizen province of Kyushu, the southernmost of the Japanese islands, was the center for the production of Japanese porcelains that includes Kakiemon and Imari. The province of Hizen has deposits of high grade kaolin suitable for porcelain production which began in about 1600. The name “Kakiemon” refers to the characteristic enamel painting from a kiln in Arita, attributed to a man called Sakaida Kakiemon who learned the secrets of enamelling from a Chinese potter. The story is unreliable, but Arita enamellers were active by the middle of the seventeenth century. “Imari” refers to enameled porcelains that range from lightly painted floral designs to the dense diaper pattern seen on the lower half of this plate. During the period of civil war in China, and for some time afterwards, there was a shortage of Chinese porcelain available for export to the West. The Dutch East India Company, based in Batavia (present day Jakarta in Indonesia) turned to Japanese porcelains, and by the 1640s the Japanese permitted them to establish a “factory” or warehouse on Deshima Island in Nagasaki harbor. In the 1670s Chinese trading vessels added to the distribution of Japanese porcelains to European ships trading out of South East Asian ports.
- Japanese porcelain was more expensive than Chinese, which contributed to the decline in trade by the middle of the eighteenth century. Pieces were brought to Dresden by agents acting for the Elector Augustus from Dutch dealers in Amsterdam. Although not a discriminating collector, the high regard Augustus developed for Japanese porcelains is indicated by his decision to rebuild the palace housing his ceramic collection and change the name from the Dutch to the Japanese Palace. The Meissen manufactory began imitation of the Japanese Kakiemon style in about 1725, sometimes so faithfully that items were mistaken for Japanese originals and exploited as such by the French merchant Rodolphe Lemaire who sold Meissen pieces at inflated prices claiming they were Japanese.
- (See Ayers, J., Impey, O., Mallet, J.V.G., Porcelain for Palaces: the fashion for Japan in Europe 1650-1750, 1990, pp. 45-47).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1740
- maker
- Meissen Manufactory
- ID Number
- CE*71.205
- catalog number
- 71.205
- collector/donor number
- 1053
- accession number
- 297499
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Meissen Chinoiserie teapot and cover
- Description
- This teapot is part of the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of European 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 psychoanalysis 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.
- Unexpected events in 1720 accelerated the pursuit of color into one of the most important breakthroughs for the Meissen manufactory, and this was a high priority because it allowed for the application of decorative motifs that were not only durable, but exceptionally rich and luminescent in color quality. From Vienna, the painter Johann Gregor Höroldt (1696-1775) came to Meissen in April 1720 with Samuel Stölzel (1685-1737), a former member of the Meissen team who took the secret of porcelain manufacture to the Imperial capital. Subject to severe punishment for revealing the secret, known as the arcanum, to the Viennese, Stölzel’s pact was to bring the talented Höroldt to Meissen in order to build the color palette and train apprentices in enamel painting. Höroldt organised the laboratory for the production of enamel colors, and developed the so-called muffle kiln to fire the enamels onto the surface of the glaze at a gentle temperature of about 1382° F., 750°C. By 1731 a trained company of twenty-nine enamel painters was in place with Höroldt then appointed their director. Höroldt’s objective was to achieve a unity of style in the work of the porcelain painters, and towards this end he took on young inexperienced painters as apprentices with others more experienced. (See Pietsch, U., Triumph of the Blue Swords, 2010, p.17).
- This teapot is one example of the porcelains painted in the chinoiserie style developed by Höroldt at Meissen. During the seventeenth century cargoes of exotic goods traded through the Dutch and English East India Companies reached Europe, bringing new colors, images, and tactile sensations into people’s lives. Even if the goods were not affordable to the majority, they were still visible in fashionable city centers where they were marketed. Following the civil war that ousted the Ming dynasty, China settled down with the establishment of the Manchu Qing dynasty after 1644, and in 1665 a commercial “Embassy” of the Dutch East India Company travelled there. The Embassy's progress to the Imperial court in Peking, now Beijing, was recorded by Jan Nieuhof (1618-1672) in his Embassy from the East India Company to the Emperor of China. The publication that followed contained many illustrations that contributed to the so-called chinoiserie style in Western Europe, a style adopted principally in architecture and interior decoration. Höroldt adapted chinoiseries for miniature painting on a range of tea, coffee and chocolate services in Meissen porcelain. It was a style that represented a European fantasy of the Orient, a land peopled with curious figures, richly dressed, and engaged in the pleasure pursuits of a fantastical daily life.
- On the teapot you see a male figure on the left directing a woman who crouches on the ground weighing provisions in a beam scale. The porcelain jar by her side has a figure holding a parasol painted on it. A brightly colored bird and an insect fly above the figures, and floral growth frame the scene. More of these oriental flowers ornament the lid, handle, and spout of the teapot. On the reverse side a richly dressed figure on the right approaches a woman who reaches down to a sack full of fruits. Between them stands a box containing various items including a branch of coral. A scene similar to these two examples exists on the side of a covered bowl in the Meissen porcelain collection in Dresden, Germany. To produce these scenes Höroldt and his enamel painters worked from a collection of drawings, over one hundred of which remain in the collection known as the Schulz Codex. (See Behrends, R., Das Meissener Musterbuch fuer Hoeroldt Chinoiserien, 1978). No two scenes on the porcelains painted in this style are identical, Höroldt and his painters elaborated and adapted the scenes from the original drawings, although Höroldt did produce six etchings in 1726 that served as models for the painters. The teapot has a grotesque mask, a convention of European decoration, at the base of the spout. With some exceptions, Höroldt’s chinoiseries, which he described as “Japanese figures” were mostly painted on Meissen’s tea, coffee and chocolate services, items that made excellent diplomatic gifts to other European courts and favored members of the aristocracy.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1723-1724
- maker
- Meissen Manufactory
- ID Number
- CE*74.130ab
- catalog number
- 74.130ab
- collector/donor number
- 733
- accession number
- 315259
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center