Domestic Furnishings

Tiffany Floor Lamp

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.

Place: Meissen

Meissen rinsing bowl (part of a service)

TITLE: Meissen coffee and tea serviceMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Two cups: H. 1¾" Two saucers: D. 5¼"; Coffeepot and cover: H. 9" 22.9cm; Teapot and cover: H. 4¼" 10.8cm; Milk jug and cover: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen coffee and tea service
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Two cups: H. 1¾" Two saucers: D. 5¼"; Coffeepot and cover: H. 9" 22.9cm; Teapot and cover: H. 4¼" 10.8cm; Milk jug and cover: H. 5½"14cm; Sugar bowl and cover: H. 4¼" 10.8cm; Bowl: H. 3½" 8.9cm
OBJECT NAME: Coffee and tea service
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1740
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: Two cups and saucers 1981.0702.05; Coffee pot and cover 1981.0702.06ab; Teapot and cover 1981.0702.07ab; Milk jug and cover 1981.0702.08ab; Sugar bowl and cover 1981.0702.09ab. Rinsing bowl 1981.0702.10
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 354;355;356;357;358;894
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “O” impressed on sugar bowl; “21” impressed on rinsing bowl.
PURCHASED FROM: Ginsburg & Levy, New York, 1943.
This rinsing bowl is from a coffee and tea service in 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 tea and coffee service has large tree peony flowers distributed along rooted brown twigs with two or three upright thorny stems in blue rising behind. The brown rim lines derive from original Kakiemon pieces in which a brown pigment applied to the rims before glazing was said to give some protection against chipping. The pattern has a symmetry that is not characteristic of Japanese Kakiemon-style porcelains, but for the European market Arita painters adapted some of their patterns to suit the preference for greater symmetry and less empty space. No Japanese prototype for this onglaze enamel painted pattern has come to light and it is possible that it is an adaptation by Meissen designers based on Japanese Kakiemon-style vessels in the royal porcelain collection in Dresden.
Kakiemon is the name given to very white (nigoshida meaning milky-white) finely potted Japanese porcelain made in the Nangawara Valley near the town of Arita in the North-West of the island of Kyushu. The porcelain bears a characteristic style of enamel painting using a palette of translucent colors painted with refined assymetric designs attributed to a family of painters with the name Kakiemon. In the 1650s, when Chinese porcelain was in short supply due to civil unrest following the fall of the Ming Dynasty to the Manchu in 1644, Arita porcelain was at first exported to Europe through the Dutch East India Company’s base on Dejima in the Bay of Nagasaki. The Japanese traded Arita porcelain only with Chinese, Korean, and Dutch merchants and the Chinese resold Japanese porcelain to the Dutch in Batavia (present day Jakarta), to the English and French at the port of Canton (present day Guangzhou) and Amoy (present day Xiamen. Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, obtained Japanese porcelain through his agents operating in Amsterdam who purchased items from Dutch merchants there and at the annual Leipzig Fair, and from a Dutch dealer in Dresden, Elizabeth Bassetouche.
For two more examples of this pattern see Pietsch, U., 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: the Wark Collectionfrom the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, p.265; see also Weber, J., 2013, Meissener Porzellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern: Stiftung Ernst Schneider in Schloss Lustheim, Band II, S. 195-198. Julia Weber identifies this pattern as one produced for the Parisian dealer Rodolphe Lemaire. On the origins of Arita porcelains see Takashi Nagatake, 2003, Classic Japanese Porcelain: Imari andKakiemon.
Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 172-173.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740
1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1981.0702.10
accession number
1981.0702
catalog number
1981.0702.10
collector/donor number
894

Meissen coffee pot and cover

TITLE: Meissen coffeepot and coverMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H. 7½" 19.1cmOBJECT NAME: CoffeepotPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: ca.
Description
TITLE: Meissen coffeepot and cover
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 7½" 19.1cm
OBJECT NAME: Coffeepot
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: ca. 1730-1735
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1983.0565.03ab
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 892ab
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; incised cross.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1952.
This coffeepot is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began collecting 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 coffeepot and cover have white reserves in a dark blue underglaze ground featuring waterside scenes with on the one side of the pot a small vessel moored on a riverbank, and on the other a riverbank and landscape with two figures and two trees in the foreground. On the cover are two harbor scenes.
Sources for harbor scenes and waterside landscapes came from the large number of prints after paintings by Dutch masters of the seventeenth century that formed a major part of Meissen’s output from the early 1720s until the 1750s. The Meissen manufactory accumulated folios of prints, about six to twelve in a set, as well as illustrated books and individual prints after the work of many European artists, but especially the work of Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), Jan van de Velde (1593-1641), and Johann Wilhelm Baur (d.1640). Printed images enriched people’s lives and a series of prints might take the viewer on a journey, real or imaginary. Prints performed a role in European visual culture later extended by photography and film, and they provided artisans and artists with images, motifs, and patterns applied in many branches of the applied arts.
In the eighteenth century tea, coffee, and chocolate was served in the private apartments of aristocratic women, usually in the company of other women, but also with male admirers and intimates present. In affluent middle-class households tea and coffee drinking was often the occasion for an informal family gathering. Coffee houses were almost exclusively male establishments and operated as gathering places for a variety of purposes in the interests of commerce, politics, culture, and social pleasure.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Enamel painters specializing in landscapes, harbor, and river scenes with staffage (figures and animals) were paid more than those who painted flowers, fruits and underglaze blue patterns. Most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage or salary. On-glaze gold decoration was the work of other specialists in this type of ornamentation.
On graphic sources for Meissen’s painters see Möller, K. A., “’…fine copper pieces for the factory…’ Meissen Pieces Based on graphic originals” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 84-93.
On the history of coffee drinking see Weinberg, B.A., Bealer, B.K., 2002, The World of Caffeine:The Science and Culture of the World’s Most Popular Drug
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. 114-115.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1730-1735
1730-1735
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1983.0565.03ab
accession number
1983.0565
catalog number
1983.0565.03ab
collector/donor number
892ab

Meissen porcelain polar bear

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1903-1905
ID Number
CE.P-284
catalog number
P-284
accession number
225282

Meissen teapot and cover (Hausmaler)

TITLE: Meissen teapot and cover (Hausmaler)MAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 5⅞" 15 cmOBJECT NAME: TeapotPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1713-1720, MeissenSUBJECT: The Hans Syz CollectionA
Description
TITLE: Meissen teapot and cover (Hausmaler)
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 5⅞" 15 cm
OBJECT NAME: Teapot
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1713-1720, Meissen
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 76.377. a,b
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 740, a,b
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: None
PURCHASED FROM: Blumka Gallery, New York, 1947.
This teapot 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 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 teapot was 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 imprisoned them if Hausmalerei activity was suspected or discovered.
The shape of the teapot came from Chinese prototypes and the design of dragons entwined with foliage is in relief. Painted in black and gold the dragon design is more in the style of European grotesques of the seventeenth century than Chinese in character, and possibly came from the Preissler family workshop in Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland). Ignaz Preissler used many printed sources from the large repertoire of seventeenth-century baroque ornament available to artists and artisans in the eighteenth century, and also created a hybrid form of chinoiserie when the style became popular in the 1720s and 1730s.
On Hausmaler see Ulrich Pietsch, 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: The Wark Collection from The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, pp. 43-46; Pazaurek, G. E., 1925, Deutsche Fayence und Porzellan Hausmaler.
On the impact of Chinese porcelain in a global context see Robert Finlay, 2010, The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection : Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 530-531.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1713-1720
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.76.377ab
accession number
1977.0166
catalog number
76.377ab
collector/donor number
740

Meissen cup and saucer

TITLE: Meissen cup and saucerMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 1⅞" 4.8cm; Saucer: D.
Description
TITLE: Meissen cup and saucer
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 1⅞" 4.8cm; Saucer: D. 5¼" 13.3cm
OBJECT NAME: Cup and saucer
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1755
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1992.0427.06 a,b
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 51 a,b
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “17” impressed on saucer; “66” or “99” impressed on cup.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1941.
This cup and saucer 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 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.
On this cup and saucer the blue ground incorporates a scale pattern leaving two reserves for the overglaze enamel painted sprays of naturalistic flowers and fruits.
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 the earlier style of “German flowers” (deutsche Blumen) the Meissen painters referred, among other publications, to Johann Wilhelm Weinmann’s Phytantoza Iconographia (Nuremberg 1737-1745), in which many of the plates of fruits and flowers were engraved after drawings by the outstanding botanical illustrator Georg Dionys Ehret (1708-1770). The more formally correct German flowers were superseded by mannered flowers (manier Blumen), depicted in a looser and somewhat overblown style based on the work of still-life flower painters and interior designers like Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (1636-1699) and Louis Tessier (1719?-1781), later referred to as “naturalistic” flowers.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower and fruit 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. Details in gold were applied by specialists in gold painting and polishing at Meissen, and so was the application of the blue scale pattern. 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 graphic sources for Meissen porcelain see Möller, K. A., “Meissen Pieces Based on Graphic Originals” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp.85-93; Cassidy-Geiger, M., 1996, ‘Graphic Sources for Meissen Porcelain’ in Metropolitan Museum Journal, 31, pp.99-126.
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. 408-409.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1755
1755
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1992.0427.06ab
catalog number
1992.0427.06ab
accession number
1992.0427
collector/donor number
51

Meissen cup and saucer

TITLE: Meissen cup and saucerMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 1½" 3.8cm; Saucer: D.
Description
TITLE: Meissen cup and saucer
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 1½" 3.8cm; Saucer: D. 4¾" 12.1cm
OBJECT NAME: Cup and saucer
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE:1740-45
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1989.0715.08 a,b
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 521 a,b
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “A” in purple (painter’s mark); “63” impressed on saucer; “E” impressed on cup.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
This cup and saucer 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 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 cup and saucer have yellow onglaze grounds on their exteriors. German flowers (deutsche Blumen) are painted in overglaze enamel on the two white reserves on the cup and on the interior of the saucer.
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 the German flowers Meissen painters referred, among other publications, to Johann Wilhelm Weinmann’s Phytantoza Iconographia (Nuremberg 1737-1745), in which many of the plates were engraved after drawings by the outstanding botanical illustrator Georg Dionys Ehret (1708-1770). The more formally correct German flowers were superseded by mannered flowers (manier Blumen), depicted in a looser and somewhat overblown style based on the work of still-life flower painters and interior designers like Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (1636-1699) and Louis Tessier (1719?-1781), later referred to as “naturalistic” flowers.
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 graphic sources for Meissen porcelain see Möller, K. A., “Meissen Pieces Based on Graphic Originals” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp.85-93; Cassidy-Geiger, M., 1996, ‘Graphic Sources for Meissen Porcelain’ in Metropolitan Museum Journal, 31, pp.99-126.
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. 366-367.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1730
1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1989.0715.08ab
catalog number
1989.0715.08ab
accession number
1989.0715
collector/donor number
521

Meissen porcelain knife handle

TITLE: Six knivesMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Handle: L.
Description
TITLE: Six knives
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Handle: L. 3¼" 8.3cm
OBJECT NAME: Knives
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1750
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1992.0427.18 a-f
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 289 a-f
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: None on the porcelain handles; on the silver blades, “H.M.” stamped, and St. Petersburg hallmarks of 1790.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
These knives 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.
With pistol-shaped handles painted with German flowers (deutsche Blumen) in overglaze enamel, there is in addition a molded basket weave pattern in relief forming a collar on the upper haft and butt end of the knives.
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 the 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). Specialist gold painters applied ornament on the rims.
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.
The handles were usually sold with a dinner service and the metal blades made to order by a silversmith local to the purchaser. Meissen flatware was often gilded.
On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meißener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136.
On graphic sources for Meissen porcelain see Möller, K. A., “Meissen Pieces Based on Graphic Originals” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp.85-93; Cassidy-Geiger, M., 1996, ‘Graphic Sources for Meissen Porcelain’ in Metropolitan Museum Journal, 31, pp.99-126.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 396-397.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
mid 18th century
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1992.0427.18A
accession number
1992.0427
catalog number
1992.0427.18A
collector/donor number
289

Meissen teapot and cover (Hausmaler)

TITLE: Meissen teapot and cover (Hausmaler)MAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 5¾" 14.6 cmOBJECT NAME: Teapot and coverPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1715-1720 MeissenSUBJECT: The Hans Syz
Description
TITLE: Meissen teapot and cover (Hausmaler)
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 5¾" 14.6 cm
OBJECT NAME: Teapot and cover
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1715-1720 Meissen
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1979.0120.09 a,b
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 57 a,b
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: None
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1941.
This teapot is from 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 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 teapot was 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. 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.
Franz Ferdinand Mayer (b. ca. 1727), active in Pressnitz (now Přísečnice in the Czech Republic) in the mid-eighteenth century, was a conventional painter, and probably ran a Hausmaler workshop as a sideline to his main occupation. The teapot has enamel color paintings after two allegorical engravings by the painter and engraver Gottfried Bernhard Göz (1708-1774). On one side we see the sense of taste as a young man raises a glass of wine while his female companion eats fruit. On the other side the sense of sight is depicted by a young woman admiring a portrait of a gentleman while a Harlequin is ready to mock from behind. The original series of four prints reveals a sharper and darker allegorical wit than the images on the teapot. Flowers painted in the style of woodcut prints of an earlier period, the so-called Holzschnittblumen and ‘shadowed’ insects appear on the cover.
Ducret, S., 1973, Keramik und graphik des 18. Jahrhunderts: Vorlagen für Maler und Modelleure, pp.141-144. See a plate with the same subject illustrated in Le Corbeiller, C., "German Porcelain of the Eighteenth Century" in The Metropolitan Museum Bulletin, Spring 1990, Vol. XLVII No. 4, p. 33.
On Hausmaler see Ulrich Pietsch, 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: The Wark Collection from The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, pp. 43-46.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp.536-537.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1715-1720
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1979.0120.09ab
catalog number
1979.0120.09ab
accession number
1979.0120
collector/donor number
57

Meissen figure group: a pair of young lovers

TITLE: Meissen figure group of a pair of young loversMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H.6½ in.
Description
TITLE: Meissen figure group of a pair of young lovers
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H.6½ in. 16.5cm.
OBJECT NAME: Figure group
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1774 -1780
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: CE*65.385
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 107
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARK: Crossed swords in underglaze blue inside a triangle (impressed).
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1942.
The figure group of a pair of young lovers 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 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 young couple appear to be in animated conversation as they walk together informally, and this is characteristic of late eighteenth-century figure groups that represent a transition from the porcelain sculptures tailored to the interests of the Dresden court before the Seven Year’s War of 1756-1763; a conflict that ruined the Saxon economy and limited the excesses of the Saxon ruling elite. Although French influence is evident in the piece, educated and affluent Germans were inclined to reject the court fashions associated with the ancien régime in favor of subjects that expressed more “natural” behavior. The professional and entrepreneurial middle class in German-speaking Europe enjoyed the products of expansion in the publishing world that brought new ideas, material products, and imaginative literature into their consciousness, and it was literature in particular that generated the cultivation of sensibility (Empfindsamkeit) through popular novels, journals, and conduct books. A “cult” that went too far in encouraging emotional extremes, according to contemporaries like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who in his youth had written the novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther” that expressed this extreme to great effect among the reading public. Sensibility was, nevertheless, a phenomenon that made a considerable impact on European culture.
The figures are possibly the work of Johann Joachim Kaendler, who died in 1775. Appointed to the Meissen modeling team after the Seven Years War, the French sculptor in porcelain Michel Victor Acier (1736-1799) introduced a style influenced by the work of French painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze; an artist criticized for overreaching sentimentality in his subjects.
On the modeling and molding process still practiced today at Meissen see Alfred Ziffer, “‘…skillfully made ready for moulding…’ The Work of Johann Joachim Kaendler” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie 1710-1815, pp.61-67.
On sensibility with reference to Britain see Barker Benfield, G.J., “Sensibility” in Iain McCalman, (general editor) 1999, An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age, pp. 102-114; Cantorino, B. B., (ed.) 2005, German Literature of the Eighteenth Century: The Enlightenment and Sensibility.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 462-463.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
ca 1750
date made
1774-1780
maker
Royal Porcelain Factory
ID Number
CE.65.385
catalog number
65.385
collector/donor number
107
accession number
262623

Meissen cup and saucer

TITLE: Meissen cup and saucerMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 2⅝" 6.7cm; Saucer: D.
Description
TITLE: Meissen cup and saucer
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 2⅝" 6.7cm; Saucer: D. 5" 12.8cm
OBJECT NAME: Cup and saucer
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1740-45
SUBJECT:
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1987.0896.10ab
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 120ab
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “95” impressed on cup; “61” impressed on saucer.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1942.
This cup and saucer 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 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 cup and saucer have solid gold grounds on their interior surfaces, and in white reserves there are waterside landscape scenes with figures. The Meissen painters generally based their images on prints after the numerous landscapes, real and imaginary, painted, etched, and engraved by seventeenth-century Dutch, Flemish and French artists, and Meissen painters were encouraged to use their imagination to ensure that their work was unique to each porcelain piece in a set of vases, a snuff box, or table service. For this reason it is often impossible to trace a Meissen subject to a specific print. The popularity of these subjects eclipsed the earlier fascination with Chinese and Japanese designs and was symptomatic of the nobility’s idealized projection of their persons into a pastoral context.
The scenes on the exterior of the cup and interior of the saucer represent the landowning class in a rural context. It could be assumed that the grand mansion in the background of the painting on the saucer is the home of the well-dressed couple with a child in the foreground. On the cup, in a continuous rural landscape, a man on horseback addresses a woman who has her hand on a large basket, perhaps full of fish as the river is close by. In the background we see a church surrounded by a small village.
The Meissen manufactory accumulated folios of prints, about six to twelve in a set, as well as illustrated books and individual prints after the work of many Dutch artists, especially Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), Jan van de Velde (1593-1641), and Johann Wilhelm Baur (d.1640). These print series were intended to bring pleasure in viewing diverse landscape subjects that led a person on a journey or opened a window for the imagination.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower and fruit 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. On-glaze gold decoration was the work of specialist gold painters and polishers, and polishing in particular required careful handling of the porcelain because of its tendency to spring apart. On this cup and saucer the marks from polishing can be seen on the gold ground surrounding the enamel painted subjects, and they are especially clear on the saucer.
On graphic sources for Meissen’s painters see Möller, K. A., “’…fine copper pieces for the factory…’ Meissen Pieces Based on graphic originals” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 84-93.
On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meissener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136.
On Dutch landscape painting see Gibson, W. S., 2000, Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 304-305.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740-1745
1740-1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1987.0896.10ab
catalog number
1987.0896.10ab
accession number
1987.0896
collector/donor number
120ab

Meissen porcelain knife handle

TITLE: Six knivesMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Handle: L.
Description
TITLE: Six knives
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Handle: L. 3¼" 8.3cm
OBJECT NAME: Knives
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1750
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1992.0427.18 a-f
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 289 a-f
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: None on the porcelain handles; on the silver blades, “H.M.” stamped, and St. Petersburg hallmarks of 1790.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
These knives 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.
With pistol-shaped handles painted with German flowers (deutsche Blumen) in overglaze enamel, there is in addition a molded basket weave pattern in relief forming a collar on the upper haft and butt end of the knives.
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 the 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). Specialist gold painters applied ornament on the rims.
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.
The handles were usually sold with a dinner service and the metal blades made to order by a silversmith local to the purchaser. Meissen flatware was often gilded.
On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meißener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136.
On graphic sources for Meissen porcelain see Möller, K. A., “Meissen Pieces Based on Graphic Originals” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp.85-93; Cassidy-Geiger, M., 1996, ‘Graphic Sources for Meissen Porcelain’ in Metropolitan Museum Journal, 31, pp.99-126.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 396-397.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
mid 18th century
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1992.0427.18D
accession number
1992.0427
catalog number
1992.0427.18D
collector/donor number
289

Meissen tea bowl and saucer

TITLE: Meissen tea bowl and saucerMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 2" 5.1cm; Saucer: D.
Description
TITLE: Meissen tea bowl and saucer
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 2" 5.1cm; Saucer: D. 5⅛" 13.1cm
OBJECT NAME: Tea bowl and saucer
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1740-1745
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1989.0715.07a,b
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 1241a,b
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “↗↗” impressed.
PURCHASED FROM: William H. Lautz, New York, 1962.
This tea bowl and saucer 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 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 butterflies and insects painted in onglaze enamels on this tea bowl and saucer were based on late sixteenth and seventeenth-century books made available to the Meissen manufactory, for example: Joris and Jacob Höfnagel’s Archetypa Studiaque Patris Georgii Hoefnagelii (1592), Maria Sybilla Merian’s Neues Blumenbuch (1675-1683) and Wenzel Hollar’s (1607-1677) illustrations of flora and fauna. These virtuoso works depicting plants and insects were used as pattern books by artists and artisans in the making of luxury artifacts well into the eighteenth century. Imagery of this kind appealed to the educated elite who developed an intense interest in nature in the search to understand flora and fauna according to the early modern concept of a planned creation of the world. Insects were appreciated for their uncommon beauty and mysterious life cycles.
The Meissen painter has copied the convention of depicting these insects with faint shadows, a conceit used by Joris Hoefnagel to trick the eye into seeing the creature as though it had just alighted on the surface of a page.
On the early sources for Meissen flower painting see Cassidy-Geiger, M., 1996, ‘Graphic Sources for Meissen Porcelain’ in Metropolitan Museum Journal, 31, pp.99-126
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp.360-361.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740-1745
1740-1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1989.0715.07ab
accession number
1989.0715
catalog number
1989.0715.07ab
collector/donor number
1241

Meissen leaf dish (Hausmaler)

TITLE: Meissen small Leaf dish (Hausmaler)MAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: L.
Description
TITLE: Meissen small Leaf dish (Hausmaler)
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: L. 4" 10.2 cm.
OBJECT NAME: Leaf dish
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1715-1720
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 75.194
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 806
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: None
PURCHASED FROM: Blumka Gallery, New York, 1948.
PROVENANCE: Collection of Oscar Bondy, Vienna .
This leaf dish 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 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 leaf dish was 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 outmoded 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 imprisoned them if Hausmalerei activity was suspected or discovered.
Painted on Böttger porcelain, probably by the Silesian Hausmaler Ignaz Preissler, the small leaf dish made at the Meissen manufactory imitates the form of Chinese brush washers made in milky white blanc de chine fired in the Dehua kilns in Fujian Province. The dishes were luxury items for the use of scholars who practiced calligraphy. In China the dishes were not decorated except for a floral sprig on the base of the dish that served as a stabilizer. The Meissen copy also has a sprig on the base with the typical twig-shaped handle. On the interior of the dish the European Hausmaler has used iron-red and gold pigment to paint a water nymph holding a basket of fruit while she rests on a dolphin. Painted on the exterior is a stag, some birds and a cupid framed by elaborate strapwork. These motifs are common to many ornamental designs dating back to the sixteenth century. Many examples of leaf dishes exist, but their purpose in a West European context is not clear.
On Hausmaler see Ulrich Pietsch, 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: The Wark Collection from The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, pp. 43-46.
On the work of Ignaz Preissler see Cassidy-Geiger, M., 1989, “’ Repraesentatio Belli, ob successionem in Regno Hispanico....”’: A Tea Service and Garniture by the Schwarzlot Decorator Ignaz Preissler” Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 24, pp. 239-254.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp.528-529.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1715-1720
1715-1720
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.75.194
catalog number
75.194
collector/donor number
806
accession number
319073

Meissen tea bowl and saucer (Hausmaler)

TITLE: Meissen tea bowl and saucer (Hausmaler)MAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Bowl: H. 1¾" 4.5 cmSaucer: D.
Description
TITLE: Meissen tea bowl and saucer (Hausmaler)
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Bowl: H. 1¾" 4.5 cm
Saucer: D. 5" 12.8 cm
OBJECT NAME: Tea bowl and saucer
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1715-1720, Meissen
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 76.378 a,b
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 505 a,b
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: None
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
This tea bowl and saucer 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 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 tea bowl and saucer 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 imprisoned them if Hausmalerei activity was suspected or discovered.
The identity of the painter of the Chinese figures in a garden setting is probably Johann Philipp Dannhöffer (1712-1790) who first worked in Vienna before moving to Bayreuth in 1737, but some uncertainty remains (see also the tankard: ID number 66.171). The pattern of the gold border, the delicate foliage and colors are considered typical of Bayreuth Hausmaler work.
On Hausmaler see Ulrich Pietsch, 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: The Wark Collection from The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, pp. 43-46.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 550-551.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1715-1720
1715-1720
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.76.378ab
catalog number
76.378ab
collector/donor number
505
accession number
1977.0166

Meissen rinsing bowl

TITLE: Meissen rinsing bowlMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H.3⅛" 8.5cmOBJECT NAME: Rinsing bowlPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1740-1750SUBJECT:ArtDomestic FurnishingIndustry and ManufacturingCREDIT
Description
TITLE: Meissen rinsing bowl
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H.3⅛" 8.5cm
OBJECT NAME: Rinsing bowl
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1740-1750
SUBJECT:
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1987.0896.14
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 452
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in undeglaze blue; “St” in gold (painter’s mark); “18” impressed.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
This rinsing bowl 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 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 subjects painted in polychrome enamels on this bowl were based on the large number of prints after paintings by Dutch artists of the seventeenth century that formed a major part of Meissen’s output from the early 1730s until the 1750s. The Meissen manufactory accumulated folios of prints, about six to twelve in a set, as well as illustrated books and individual prints after the work of many Dutch artists, especially Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), Jan van de Velde II(1593-1641), and Johann Wilhelm Baur (d.1640). Meissen painters often based their images on imaginary landscapes by Dutch artists, and were encouraged to use their imagination to ensure that their work was unique to each porcelain piece in a set of vases, a table or tea and coffee service.
The painting represents a continuous scene encircling the exterior of the bowl in which handsomely dressed so-called “Watteau” figures appear at rest on the banks of a river with their dog nearby, a man on horseback approaches along a path while a figure can be seen walking behind him. On the river a man and a woman are ferried to the opposite side. As the scene continues around the bowl a village appears in the distance and a man sits at rest beside the road. Subjects like this were symptomatic of the nobility’s idealized projection of their persons into a pastoral context that was perceived to be a site of simplicity and picturesque tranquility free of the obligations imposed by court society. At the same time it was a statement of land ownership where the privileged surveyed their possessions from their position of advantage?
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower and fruit 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. On-glaze gold decoration was the work of specialist gold painters and polishers.
Rinsing bowls were used to dispense with tea and coffee dregs before refilling cups or tea bowls with fresh liquid.
On graphic sources for Meissen’s painters see Möller, K. A., “’…fine copper pieces for the factory…’ Meissen Pieces Based on graphic originals” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 84-93. On Dutch landscape painting see Gibson, W. S., 2000, Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael.
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. 308-309.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740-1745
1740-1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1987.0896.14
catalog number
1987.0896.14
accession number
1987.0896
collector/donor number
452

Meissen bowl

TITLE: Meissen BowlMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H. 3 in. 7.6cm; D. 6in.
Description
TITLE: Meissen Bowl
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 3 in. 7.6cm; D. 6in. 15.3cm
OBJECT NAME: Bowl
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1725-1735
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1979.0120.05
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 1090
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1959.
The bowl 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 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 bowl is in the style of early Böttger porcelains designed by the Dresden court goldsmith, Johann Jacob Irminger (1635-1724), but with the mark of crossed swords in underglaze blue it was made, or finished, in or after 1725. Irminger adapted his designs for many of the Böttger red stonewares and porcelains from vessels made in silver or gold, and from cut and polished stone ornaments in the quartz family like agate, chalcedony, and jasper. The bowl featured here does not have a rim that finishes in a fine outward flare, characteristic of most Meissen bowls and tea bowls of this early period (see for comparison ID number 75.186 with applied acanthus tendrils), so its history and purpose is not entirely clear. Given the bowl's rather inferior quality, it might be a trial piece for a later porcelain body introduced in the 1720s.
Laurel leaves, molded separately and applied to the bowl, rise from the foot ring, and this pattern can be seen on many examples of Böttger red stonewares and porcelains, especially the vases. Like the acanthus motif, laurel has its origins in the ornament of ancient Greece, where the plant was sacred to Apollo and used in purification rituals. More familiar perhaps is the mythical story of Apollo’s pursuit of the nymph Daphne, who not returning his passion, flees from him to her father the river god, Peneus. Rescue comes by transforming his daughter into a laurel tree.
On Böttger stoneware and porcelain see Pietsch, U., 1993, Early Meissen Porcelain: a Private Collection; by the same author, 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: the Wark Collection from the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens.
Zimmerman, E., 1908, Die Erfindung und Fruhzeit des Meissner Porzellans: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Keramik.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 268-269.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1725-1735
1725-1735
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1979.0120.05
catalog number
1979.0120.05
accession number
1979.0120
collector/donor number
1090

Meissen stoneware rinsing bowl

MARKS: None.PURCHASED FROM: Hans E. Backer, London, England, 1949.This rinsing bowl is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr.
Description
MARKS: None.
PURCHASED FROM: Hans E. Backer, London, England, 1949.
This rinsing bowl 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.
This rinsing bowl 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 the development of white porcelain but remained in production for only twenty years following the introduction of white porcelain in 1710.
The glazed bowl is of dark brown stoneware, and the color of the stoneware body in this class of objects varied considerably from a bright iron red to dark brown or grey. It is likely that this black-glazed bowl was made to resemble the highly prized black lacquer wares imported to Europe from Japan by the Dutch East India Company. The bowl may have been one of many produced at Meissen with the intention of painting the surface with gold and a limited palette of cold colors in imitation of the Japanese originals (see Kopplin, M., van Aken-Fehmers, M.S., Cassidy-Geiger, M., 2004, Schwartz Porcelain: the lacquer craze and its impact on European porcelain, exhibition catalog of the Staatlicher Schlösser und Gärten Baden-Württemberg).
Rinsing bowls received the water that was used to wash out the dregs of tea in tea bowls and cups before refilling the vessels with fresh liquid.
On the introduction of tea see Ukers, W. H., 1936, All About Tea; Bowman, P.B., 1995, In Praise of Hot Liquors: The Study of Chocolate, Coffee and Tea-drinking 1600-1850.
On Yixing stonewares see Lo, K.S., 1986, The Stonewares of Yixing from the Ming Period to the Present Day; Fang Lili, 2011, Chinese Ceramics, Cambridge University Press, p. 115 Zisha-the Taste of Tea.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 28-29.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1710-1715
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.76.362
catalog number
76.362
collector/donor number
839
accession number
1977.0166

Meissen sugar box and cover

TITLE: Meissen sugar box and coverMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H. 3" 7.6cm; L. 4¼" 10.8cmOBJECT NAME: Sugar boxPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: ca.
Description
TITLE: Meissen sugar box and cover
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 3" 7.6cm; L. 4¼" 10.8cm
OBJECT NAME: Sugar box
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: ca. 1722-1723
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 76.368ab
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 225
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: “K.P.F.” (Königliche Porzellan Fabrik) in underglaze blue; red luster design inside box and cover
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
This sugar box 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 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 sugar box has a landscape on the cover depicting a flock of birds rising above a gate entrance to a country property, and a tree silhouetted against the sky is seen on the left of the cover. On the box waterside scenes framed by scrolled cartouches typical of Meissen at this date are set against an expanse of sky with flocks of birds taking to the air; so-called Indian flowers (indianische Blumen) decorate the areas outside the frames.
Sources for enamel painted harbor scenes and landscapes came from the large number of prints after paintings by Dutch masters of the seventeenth century that formed a major part of Meissen’s output from the early 1720s until the 1750s. The Meissen manufactory accumulated folios of prints, about six to twelve in a set, as well as illustrated books and individual prints after the work of many European artists, especially the work of Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), Jan van de Velde (1593-1641), and Johann Wilhelm Baur (d.1640). The artist Jan van de Velde II was a prolific printmaker in what was a thriving publishing industry in the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century. The folios of print series featuring landscapes, villages, country houses, and waterside scenes were intended to bring pleasure and repose to those who purchased them, especially to people living in the busy cities of the Republic, and this appeal endured well into the eighteenth century beyond the borders of the Netherlands.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Enamel painters specializing in landscapes, harbor, and river scenes with staffage (figures and animals) were paid more than those who painted flowers, fruits and underglaze blue patterns. Most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage or salary. Decorative scrollwork and gold painting was the responsibility of other painters specializing in this form of decoration. All enameled and gold painted items passed through several pairs of hands in their making.
Tea, coffee, chocolate, and sugar were luxury products for early eighteenth-century consumers, and the equipage for these hot beverages, made in silver and new ceramic materials like Meissen’s red stoneware and porcelain, was affordable only to the elite of European society. Less expensive versions for storing and preparing these products were made from various kinds of wood, from tin, from japanned materials, and in earthenware pottery.
On graphic sources for Meissen’s painters see Möller, K. A., “’…fine copper pieces for the factory…’ Meissen Pieces Based on graphic originals” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 84-93.
On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meissener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136.
On prints from the Netherlands see Goddard, S. H., Sets and Series: Prints from the Low Countries.
On tea, coffee, and chocolate equipage see Bowman, P.B., 1995, In Praise of Hot Liquors: The Study of Chocolate, Coffee and Tea-drinking 1600-1850.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 102-103.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1723-1724
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.76.368ab
catalog number
76.368ab
accession number
1977.0166
collector/donor number
225ab

Meissen chocolate cup and saucer (part of a service: Hausmaler)

TITLE: Meissen: Part of a tea service (Hausmalerin)MAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Tea bowls: H. 1¾" 4.5 cmChocolate cup: 3⅛" 8 cmSaucer: D. 5⅛" 13.1 cmTeapot: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen: Part of a tea service (Hausmalerin)
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Tea bowls: H. 1¾" 4.5 cm
Chocolate cup: 3⅛" 8 cm
Saucer: D. 5⅛" 13.1 cm
Teapot: H. 5" 12.8 cm
OBJECT NAME: Part of a tea service
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1730
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1987.0896. 34 A,B; 36 a,b; 37 a,b
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 227 A,B; 228 a,b; 229 a,b
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue, except chocolate cup, which is unmarked.
PURCHASED FROM: Minerva Antiques, New York, 1943.
These parts from a tea service are in 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 parts of this tea service 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 tea service was painted in Augsburg in the 1720s.Two hundred years earlier Augsburg was the center of international merchant banking, and it is no coincidence that it was also a center for goldsmithing work of exceptional quality. Although no longer a powerful city in the eighteenth century, Augsburg was still renowned for its high quality artisan trades in precious metals, book production, and textiles. Hausmalerei was one among many subsidiary trades that met demands from other workshops, individual clients, and new manufactories like that of Meissen.
This Meissen tea service was probably painted by Anna Elizabeth Wald (b. 1696), and perhaps by her sister Sabina Hosennestel (1706-1782) as well. The two women were the daughters of the gold worker and Hausmaler Johann Aufenwerth (d.1728) but it is difficult to distinguish their styles one from the other. Another sister, Johanna Warmberger (1693-1772), also worked in the family business. The sisters specialized in decorative gilding and enamel painting of chinoiseries like the images seen here of two gentlemen smoking and taking tea in a garden.
Sabina Hosennestel married the tradesman and coffee-house owner, Isaac Hosennestel in 1731. It is thought that some of the porcelain vessels painted by the Aufenwerth sisters were intended for use in the coffee-house alongside Chinese and Japanese imported porcelain. There were five other coffee-houses in Augsburg in the first half of the eighteenth century.
Other pieces from this service are in the Forsythe Wickes Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (inv. Numbers 65.2076-65.2080).
See Ducret, S., 1971, Meissner Porzellan bemalt in Augsburg, 1718 bis um 1750, Band 1 Goldmalereien und bunte Chinoiserien.
On Hausmaler see Ulrich Pietsch, 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: The Wark Collection from The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, pp. 43-46.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 506-507.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1720-1725
1720-1725
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1987.0896.36ab
catalog number
1987.0896.36ab
accession number
1987.0896
collector/donor number
228

Meissen tea bowl and Vienna saucer

TITLE: Meissen tea bowl (with Vienna saucer)MAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H.1⅝" 4.2cmOBJECT NAME: Tea bowl and saucerPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1725-1730 Tea bowl (Meissen)1750-1755 Saucer (V
Description
TITLE: Meissen tea bowl (with Vienna saucer)
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H.1⅝" 4.2cm
OBJECT NAME: Tea bowl and saucer
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1725-1730 Tea bowl (Meissen)
1750-1755 Saucer (Vienna)
SUBJECT:
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1983.0565.38 AB
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 919 AB
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue on tea bowl; shield in underglaze blue, and “70” incised on saucer.
PURCHASED FROM: Hans Backer, London, England, 1952.
This tea bowl, with a matching saucer made in Vienna, 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 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 pattern on this tea bowl and saucer painted in overglaze enamel, purple luster, and gold comes from Johann Schmischek’s (1585-1650) Groteschgen Büchlein (Little Book of Grotesques) published in Munich in 1630, and the patterns were originally designed for the ornamentation of guns, hence the hunting dog confronting a wild boar on the saucer and another dog chasing a hare on the tea bowl; Schmischek is listed as an arquebusier in contemporary catalogs which probably indicates his work as a designer of ornament for this class of weaponry. Not many Meissen pieces with this pattern exist today, and that suggests that the design was not successful or that the service was a private commission. These pieces are further complicated by the fact that the saucer appears to have been made in Vienna, and a sugar bowl with a Du Paquier Vienna mark passed through Christie’s salerooms in 2005. The saucer may have been a replacement and the sugar bowl a replacement or an addition to the set that may well have been in Vienna in the mid-eighteenth century.
Experts suggest on the one hand that the decoration on the tea bowl was the work of a Hausmaler, an enamel painter outside the Meissen manufactory, or on the other hand, that the presence of purple luster indicates decoration at Meissen; purple luster was not usually seen outside the manufactory in the 1720s. It is also possible that an outside decorator could have mastered the technique of handling purple luster as this style is not typical of Meissen in the 1730s.
To view the Vienna saucer see ID number 1983.0565.38B
Two tea bowls and saucers with very similar patterns can be seen in Ulrich Pietsch, Early Meissen Porcelain: The Wark Collection from the Cummer Museum and Art Gallery (The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens and D.Giles Ltd: Jacksonville FL and London UK, 2011) p.521. Comparable items are in the collections of the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle WA; the British Museum (1955.0708.1)and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London UK (202&A-1854); the Nationalmuseum Stockholm, Sweden.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 276-277.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1725-1730
tea bowl 1725-1730
saucer 1750-55
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1983.0565.38A
accession number
1983.0565
catalog number
1983.0565.38A
collector/donor number
919

Meissen porcelain knife handle

TITLE: Six knivesMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Handle: L.
Description
TITLE: Six knives
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Handle: L. 3¼" 8.3cm
OBJECT NAME: Knives
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1750
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1992.0427.18 a-f
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 289 a-f
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: None on the porcelain handles; on the silver blades, “H.M.” stamped, and St. Petersburg hallmarks of 1790.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
These knives 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.
With pistol-shaped handles painted with German flowers (deutsche Blumen) in overglaze enamel, there is in addition a molded basket weave pattern in relief forming a collar on the upper haft and butt end of the knives.
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 the 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). Specialist gold painters applied ornament on the rims.
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.
The handles were usually sold with a dinner service and the metal blades made to order by a silversmith local to the purchaser. Meissen flatware was often gilded.
On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meißener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136.
On graphic sources for Meissen porcelain see Möller, K. A., “Meissen Pieces Based on Graphic Originals” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp.85-93; Cassidy-Geiger, M., 1996, ‘Graphic Sources for Meissen Porcelain’ in Metropolitan Museum Journal, 31, pp.99-126.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 396-397.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
mid 18th century
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1992.0427.18E
accession number
1992.0427
catalog number
1992.0427.18E
collector/donor number
289

Meissen cup and saucer

TITLE: Meissen cup and saucerMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H 1½" 3.8cm; Saucer D. 4¾" 12.1cmOBJECT NAME: Cup and saucerPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: ca.
Description
TITLE: Meissen cup and saucer
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H 1½" 3.8cm; Saucer D. 4¾" 12.1cm
OBJECT NAME: Cup and saucer
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: ca. 1740
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1987.0896.12ab
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 99ab
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; two dots overglaze in iron-red and “10” impressed on cup; “11” impressed on saucer (former’s numbers).
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1941.
This cup and saucer 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 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 exteriors of both the cup and saucer have yellow onglaze grounds. On the interior of the saucer there is a finely painted and well composed onglaze enamel painting of a man and a dog crossing a high bridge over a river. A fisherman stands on the left bank of the river with a village in the background and just discernible is a windmill in the far distance. In white reserves on the exterior of the cup there are river and harbor scenes also painted in black with some iron-red.
Waterways formed a major conduit for trade in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, and artists produced a large number of paintings and prints that featured everyday life alongside rivers, canals and harbors. The enduring popularity of waterside and landscape subjects, especially the tranquil rural scenes depicted in prints by artists like Jan van de Velde, held particular appeal for Europeans confined to city and court. Long before Meissen began production Dutch artists realized the potential for a market in prints that led viewers into pleasant places real and imagined. In seventeenth-century Amsterdam there was a flourishing publishing industry to support the production of illustrated books and print series for buyers to view at their leisure. Printed images enriched people’s lives and a series of prints might take the viewer on a journey, real or imaginary. Prints performed a role in European visual culture later extended by photography and film, and they provided artisans and artists with images, motifs, and patterns applied in many branches of the applied arts.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Enamel painters specializing in landscapes, harbor, and river scenes with staffage (figures and animals) were paid more than those who painted flowers, fruits and underglaze blue patterns. Most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage or salary. Onglaze colored grounds, like the yellow ground seen here were applied onto the surface of the glaze either with a stippling brush in which the pigment was flicked onto the surface of the glaze from a lightly loaded brush, or applied in powder form from a pad, a difficult technique that required skill in order to achieve an even coat with good depth of color. Gold rim lines were applied by another worker in the painting division.
On seventeenth-century Dutch art see Gibson, W.S., (2000) Pleasant Places: the rustic landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael; Goddard, S.H., (1984) Sets and Series: prints from the Low Countries, exhibition catalog, Yale University Art Gallery.
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. 306-307.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740
1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1987.0896.12ab
catalog number
1987.0896.12ab
accession number
1987.0896
collector/donor number
99ab

Meissen red stoneware coffeepot and cover

MARKS: Impressed pseudo-Chinese mark.PURCHASED FROM: Paul Schnyder of Wartensee, Lucerne, Switzerland, and New York, 1950.This coffeepot is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr.
Description
MARKS: Impressed pseudo-Chinese mark.
PURCHASED FROM: Paul Schnyder of Wartensee, Lucerne, Switzerland, and New York, 1950.
This coffeepot 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.
This coffeepot and cover 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 coffeepot represents a distinct class of objects in the red stoneware group in which the gilding and color was applied at the workshop of the Dresden court lacquerer, Martin Schnell. Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland (1670-1733) admired and collected lacquer vessels and furniture exported to the West from Japan. Martin Schnell 1675-1740), who trained in the workshop of Gerhard Dagly (1657-1715) in Berlin, was appointed director of the Dresden lacquer workshop in 1710. Schnell lacquered very fine examples of furniture, but it is unlikely that he did much work for Meissen even though he was associated with the manufactory for several years.
The shape of the coffeepot and cover comes from Turkish prototypes made in metal. Manganese oxide was added to the glaze to create a dense black, and it was then sent to the Dresden lacquer workshop for cold gilding in the style of Far Eastern lacquer wares. The pot has eight panels of alternating foliate and diaper patterns, and the cover has overlapping scroll bands with a crescent moon in relief. This type of Meissen product first appeared at the Leipzig Easter fair in 1710. Sources for the motifs on this group of objects came from prints and pattern books like Paul Decker’s (1677-1713) Muster für Lackierer (Patterns for Lacquerers), and the 1688 publication by John Stalker and George Parker A Treatise for Japanning and Varnishing.
On the problem of attributing work to Martin Schnell see Kopplin, M., Lacquer Painting on Böttger Stoneware: Three Walzenkruge and the problem of attribution to Martin Schnell, http://www.kunstpedia.com/articles/lacquer-painting-on-b%C3%B6ttger-stoneware--three-walzenkr%C3%BCge-and-the-problem-of-attribution-to-martin-schnell.html
See also Kopplin, M., van Aken-Fehmers, M.S., Cassidy-Geiger, M., 2004, Schwartz Porcelain: the lacquer craze and its impact on European porcelain, exhibition catalog of the Staatlicher Schlösser und Gärten Baden-Württemberg.
On Yixing stonewares see Lo, K.S. 1986, The Stonewares of Yixing from the Ming Period to the Present Day.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 30-31
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1710-1715
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.71.198ab
accession number
297499
collector/donor number
860
catalog number
71.198ab

Meissen red stoneware teapot and cover

MARKS: None.PURCHASED FROM: Paul Schnyder of Wartensee, Lucerne, Switzerland, and New York, 1950.This teapot and cover is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr.
Description
MARKS: None.
PURCHASED FROM: Paul Schnyder of Wartensee, Lucerne, Switzerland, and New York, 1950.
This teapot and cover 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), formerly of Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. 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.
This teapot and cover 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 teapot represents a distinct class of objects in the red stoneware group in which the gilding and color was applied at the workshop of the Dresden court lacquerer, Martin Schnell. Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland (1670-1733) admired and collected the lacquer vessels and furniture exported to the West from Japan. Martin Schnell 1675-1740), who trained in the workshop of Gerhard Dagly (1657-1715) in Berlin, was appointed director of the Dresden lacquer workshop in 1710. Schnell lacquered very fine examples of furniture, but it is unlikely that he did much work for Meissen even though he was associated with the manufactory for several years. This type of Meissen product first appeared at the Leipzig Easter fair in 1710.
The octagonal shape of this teapot follows the form of contemporary silver vessels and was probably designed by the Dresden court goldsmith Johann Jakob Irminger (1635-1724). The stoneware is red-brown in color and the glaze is a blackish-brown. It was decorated in the Dresden lacquer workshop with a seated Chinese figure on one side between panels of foliate designs, and on the other side the monkey figure seen in this photograph is also flanked by foliate designs, and this is an early representation of a monkey in Meissen’s production. Sources for the motifs on this group of objects came from prints and pattern books like Paul Decker’s (1677-1713) Muster für Lackierer (Patterns for Lacquerers), and the 1688 publication by John Stalker and George Parker A Treatise for Japanning and Varnishing.
For a comparable example see Ulrich Pietsch, 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: The Wark Collection from the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens.
See also Kopplin, M., van Aken-Fehmers, M.S., Cassidy-Geiger, M., 2004, Schwartz Porcelain: the lacquer craze and its impact on European porcelain, exhibition catalog of the Staatlicher Schlösser und Gärten Baden-Württemberg.
On the problem of attributing work to Martin Schnell see Kopplin, M., Lacquer Painting on Böttger Stoneware: Three Walzenkruge and the problem of attribution to Martin Schnell, http://www.kunstpedia.com/articles/lacquer-painting-on-b%C3%B6ttger-stoneware--three-walzenkr%C3%BCge-and-the-problem-of-attribution-to-martin-schnell.html
Ukers, W. H., 1935, All about Tea
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 32-33.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1710-1715
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.70.641ab
accession number
292238
collector/donor number
861
catalog number
70.641ab

Our collection database is a work in progress. We may update this record based on further research and review. Learn more about our approach to sharing our collection online.

If you would like to know how you can use content on this page, see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use. If you need to request an image for publication or other use, please visit Rights and Reproductions.