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.

Topic: The Hans C. Syz Collection

Meissen leaf dish

TITLE: Meissen leaf dishMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: L.
Description
TITLE: Meissen leaf dish
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: L. 10⅜" 26.3cm
OBJECT NAME: Leaf dish
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: 1987.0896.07
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 1341
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue.
PURCHASED FROM: W. H. Lautz, New York, 1963.
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 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.
Molded in the shape of a large cabbage leaf, these items were fairly common in Meissen’s production. It is likely they were used during the service of dinners in the French style in which dishes were placed in a decorative manner on the table from which diners selected food for their plate. Each course was carefully designed for an impressive display, but the visual climax of the dinner was the dessert, the course in which specially designed vessels in porcelain and glass supported artfully placed fruits, sweetmeats, jellies and creams, and for which the confectioners created elaborate table decorations in sugar that were augmented by porcelain figures and centerpieces.
The Meissen Manufactory produced several versions of serving vessels in the shape of fruits and vegetables, for example: melon, pomegranate, and peach-shaped teapots based on Chinese and Japanese models, asparagus boxes, a cabbage tureen (see Den Blaauwen, A. L., 2000, Meissen Porcelain in the Rijksmuseum, p.341), and the eighteenth-century table, whether furnished in silver, porcelain or faience, featured exuberant displays of flora and fauna tumbling over soup tureens and center pieces. Numerous manufactories of both porcelain and fine earthenware produced vessels in the forms of cabbages and cauliflowers, which were especially popular.
On the Meissen dinner services and table decorations see Ulrich Pietsch “Famous Eighteenth-Century Meissen Dinner Services” and Maureen Cassidy-Geiger “”The Hof-Conditorey in Dresden” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 94-105; 120-131; for a wider study of court table decorations see Bursche, S., 1974, Tafelzier des Barock.
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. 282-283.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740-1745
1740-1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1987.0896.07
catalog number
1987.0896.07
accession number
1987.0896
collector/donor number
1341

Meissen chinoiserie sugar box and cover

TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie sugar box and coverMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H. 2½" 6.3cm; L.
Description
TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie sugar box and cover
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 2½" 6.3cm; L. 4½" 11.4cm
OBJECT NAME: Sugar box
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1723-1724
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1982.0796.02
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 730
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords and “K.P.M.” (Königliche Porzellan Manufacktur)in underglaze blue; “4” in gold on box; “4C” in gold on cover (gold painter’s marks).
PURCHASED FROM: Hans E. Backer, London, England, 1947. Ex. Coll. Mrs. Studd.
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 painted in onglaze enamels in the chinoiserie style belongs to the distinctive period in Meissen’s history that began in 1720 with the arrival from Vienna of Johann Gregor Höroldt (1696-1775). Höroldt brought with him superior skills in enamel painting on porcelain, and his highly significant contribution to Meissen was to develop a palette of very fine bright enamel colors that had so far eluded the team of metallurgists at the manufactory, and that were new to onglaze enamel colors on faience and porcelain in general.
The box has a series of figures framed by foliage; a young boy stands near a steaming kettle holding something, perhaps a bird or animal in his hands, another man holds two sticks above a large bowl or a drum, two men sit at a table, one with a drinking vessel in his hand, the other preparing to rise with a fan held in his left hand. In another scene a man and a young boy kneel before a decorated pillar on which stands a bowl containing a branch of coral and a three-footed cauldron that possibly burns an aromatic substance; an auspicious substance for the Chinese, branching coral symbolizes longevity. On the cover a woman and a naked baby gesture towards each other in a garden setting framed by scrollwork in gold, iron-red enamel, and purple luster.
Many of the figures seen in the chinoiseries were based on drawings and prints by Johann Gregor Höroldt and other Meissen painters that were collected before the turn of the twentieth century by Georg Wilhelm Schulz and that became known as the Schulz Codex, and the woman reaching out to the baby can be found on plate 8 of a facsimile folio publication Das Meissener Musterbuch für Höroldt-Chinoiserien: Musterblätter aus der Malstube der Meissener Porzellanmanufaktur (Schulz Codex) Leipzig, 1978.
Chinoiserie is from the French Chinois (Chinese) and refers to ornamentation that is Chinese-like. The style evolved in Europe as Chinese luxury products began to arrive in the West in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries through the major European trading companies. Artisans were quick to incorporate motifs from these products into their work and to imitate their material qualities, especially the Chinese lacquers, embroidered silks, and porcelains, but their imitation was not informed by first-hand knowledge of China or an understanding of Chinese conventions in two-dimensional representation, and instead a fanciful European vision emerged to become an ornamental style employed in garden and interior design, in cabinet making, faience and porcelain manufacture, and in textiles. Illustrated books that began to appear in the second half of the seventeenth century describing the topography of China, its peoples and their customs, were a significant source of ideas for designers, artists, printmakers, and artisans. Chinese woodblock prints also began to reach the West and were attractive to collectors, designers, and artisans.
The sugar box belongs to the same service as the coffeepot (ID# 1982.0796.01) and it was possibly painted by Johann Gregor Höroldt. Meissen tea and coffee services of this early period were often sent as gifts to members of European royalty favored by the Saxon and Polish courts. They served as tokens of loyalty and affection to relatives in other royal houses with family connections to the Saxon House of Wettin.
On Johann Gregor Höroldt see Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 17-25.
On chinoiserie see Impey, O., 1997, Chinoiserie: the Impact of Oriental Styles on Western Art and Decoration; on the porcelain trade and European exposure to the Chinese product see the exhibition catalog by Emerson, J., Chen, J., Gardner Gates, M., 2000, Porcelain Stories: from China to Europe
On gift-giving see Cassidy-Geiger, M., 2008, Fragile Diplomacy: Meissen Porcelain for European Courts 1710-1763.
Hans Syz, Jefferson Miller II, J., Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 64-67.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1723-1724
1723-1724
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1982.0796.02ab
catalog number
1982.0796.02ab
accession number
1982.0796
collector/donor number
730ab

Meissen coffee pot and cover

TITLE: Meissen coffeepot and coverMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen coffeepot and cover
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 8⅞" 22.5cm
OBJECT NAME: Coffeepot
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: ca.1745-1750
SUBJECT:
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1983.0565.46 a,b
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 108 a,b
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; large incised “N” or “2”.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1942.
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 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 coffeepot has two scenes based on the French fêtes galantes; on one side a young man serenades a young woman on his flute and on the other side the instrument played is a guitar. The shape of the coffeepot is one commonly used at Meissen in the 1740s and 1750s and based on metal prototypes.
In the work of French artist Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) we see the development of the fêtes galantes based on the outdoor entertainments in private and public pleasure parks that represent youthful elite society removed from the conventions of court protocol. Watteau’s works depicted conversational, theatrical, and amorous encounters set in idealized pastoral surroundings where the fleeting nature of temporal pleasures hangs over the delicately poised gatherings, and they struck a chord with living protagonists.
In the early 1740s the manufactory began to acquire a collection of copperplate engravings on which the Meissen painters based their “Watteauszenen” (Watteau scenes), and they became so much in demand that eleven painters were appointed to specialize in work on this theme. The figure of the man playing a lute can be seen on another item in the Hans Syz Collection, on the saucer of ID number 1989.0715.04.
The subject has its origins in a painting by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) titled L’Enchanteur in which a young man serenades and attempts to engage the interest of two women seated in a park while a male figure stands in the shadows behind them. The subject was engraved by Benoît Audran II (1698-1772). There is a Meissen saucer with the same subject in the collection of Constance I. and Ralph H. Wark at the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida. See 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.415.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Enamel painters specializing in landscapes and subjects with figures 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.
Ornamental gold painting and polishing was the work of other specialists in the manufactory.
On Antoine Watteau see Thomas Crow, 1985, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris, chapter II, ‘Fêtes Galantes and Fêtes Publiques’, pp. 55-75. See also Sheriff, M. D., (ed.) 2006, Antoine Watteau: Perspectives on the Artist and the Culture of His Time.
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 Collectio: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 332-333.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1745-1750
1745-1750
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1983.0565.46ab
catalog number
1983.0565.46ab
accession number
1983.0565
collector/donor number
108

Meissen figure of a hunter

TITLE: Meissen figure of a huntsmanMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 6¼" 15.9 cmOBJECT NAME: FigurePLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1750SUBJECT: The Hans Syz CollectionArtDomestic Furnishin
Description
TITLE: Meissen figure of a huntsman
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 6¼" 15.9 cm
OBJECT NAME: Figure
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: 76.372
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 47
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, 1941.
This figure 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.
In his work book Die Arbeitsberichte des Meissener Porzellanmodelleurs Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775) records repairs made to a figure of a Dutch hunter with his shotgun in his right hand, his powder flask slung over his left shoulder, and his dog lying at his feet. The original mold was destroyed completely during the Seven Years War when the Meissen Manufactory was in the hands of Frederick II of Prussia who invaded Saxony in 1756. The model was repaired for re-molding in 1764 after hostilities ceased. (See Johann Joachim Kaendler, 2002, Die Arbeitsberichte des Meissener Porzellanmodelleurs Leipzig, p. 128, September 1764).
Hunting subjects were very popular in just about every branch of the visual arts in the eighteenth century. All facets of the hunt can be found from violent depictions of the kill to a hunter and his dog at rest as seen in this figure. Not all hunting subjects represented the court chase. Hunting on a less excessive and damaging scale took place informally as part of the husbandry of farming and the management of estates.
Meissen figures and figure groups are usually sculpted in special modeling clay and then cut carefully into separate pieces from which individual molds are made. Porcelain clay is then pressed into the molds and the whole figure or group reassembled to its original form, a process requiring great care and skill. The piece is then dried thoroughly before firing in the kiln. In the production of complex figure groups the work is arduous and requires the making of many molds from the original model.
The figure is painted in overglaze enamel colors and gold. It is possible that figures with this subject were used to decorate the dessert table at feasts celebrating a hunt, and then later collected for display in cabinets.
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.
Johann Joachim Kaendler, Die Arbeitsberichte des Meissener Porzellanmodelleurs Leipzig: Edition Leipzig, 2002, p. 128, September 1764.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 464-465.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1750
1750
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.76.372
catalog number
76.372
accession number
1977.0166
collector/donor number
47

Meissen tea bowl and saucer (part of a service)

TITLE: Meissen tea and coffee service (incomplete)MAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Coffeepot and cover: H. 9¼" 23.5cm; Cream jug and cover: H. 5⅜" 13.7cm;Teapot and cover: H. 4½" 11.4cm; Rinsing bowl: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen tea and coffee service (incomplete)
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Coffeepot and cover: H. 9¼" 23.5cm; Cream jug and cover: H. 5⅜" 13.7cm;
Teapot and cover: H. 4½" 11.4cm; Rinsing bowl: H. 3⅜" 8.5cm;
Sugar bowl and cover: H. 4¼" 10.8cm; Cup and saucer (468): Cup: H. 2¾" 7cm,
Saucer: D. 5¼" 13.3 cm; Cup and saucer (469) Cup: H. 1¾" 4.5cm,
Saucer: D. 5¼" 13.3cm;
Tea bowl and saucer: Bowl: H. 1¾" 4.5cm; Saucer: D. 2¾" 7cm
OBJECT NAME: Tea and coffee service
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1750-1760
SUBJECT:
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: The Hans Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 61.69 A-H
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 462-470 A-H
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “W” in purple on most pieces (painter’s mark); various impressed numbers (2,4,24,53,59,64,66).
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
This tea bowl and saucer is from a tea and coffee 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.
All the items from this tea and coffee service have elaborate overglaze polychrome rococo cartouches of vines, scrolls, and trellises framing harbor scenes with accessory figures at work on or near the water, and pastoral scenes featuring the elegant so-called “Watteau” figures. Sources for enamel painted harbor scenes and landscapes came from the vast number of prints after paintings by Italian, Dutch, and Flemish masters of the seventeenth century that formed a major part of Meissen’s output from the early 1730s until the 1760s. 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) and Jan van de Velde (1593-1641). Here the idealized landscapes and harbor scenes form the setting through which the nobility and landed gentry walk, ride, and take their ease, surveying their possessions removed from the formality of the court. In the early 1740s the manufactory began to acquire a collection of copperplate engravings on which the Meissen painters based their “Watteauszenen” (Watteau scenes), and they became so much in demand that eleven painters were appointed to specialize in work on this theme. Meissen used the shapes of the pieces in this service many times with some variation on details like handles, spouts, and finials.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Enamel painters specializing in landscapes and subjects with figures 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.
The “W” painted in purple possibly refers to the painter’s mark of Johann Benjamin Wentzel (or Wenzel 1696?-1765) who appears in the Meissen records as a painter of “landscapes and views” in 1750.
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 and prints 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. 334-335.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1750-1760
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.61.69Hab
catalog number
61.69Hab
accession number
240074
collector/donor number
470

Meissen dish

TITLE: Meissen dishMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: D.
Description
TITLE: Meissen dish
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: D. 9¼" 23.5cm
OBJECT NAME: Plate
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1729-1731
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 69.62
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 677
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in overglaze blue; “N=8/W” engraved (Johanneum mark).
PURCHASED FROM: Hans E. Backer, London, England, 1947.
This soup plate 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 design on this dish belongs to the Yellow Lion Service (Gelber Löwe), even though the animal wrapped around a bamboo and looking towards an ancient prunus tree is clearly a tiger. There are many Meissen pieces in existence with this pattern and it was first produced for the Parisian dealer Rodolphe Lemaire. On discovery of Lemaire’s fraudulent activity aided by Count Hoym extant pieces carrying this pattern, of which this dish is one, were confiscated and placed in the Japanese Palace that housed the porcelain collection of Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland (1670-1733); much admired at court the design possibly got the name “yellow lion”because of the animal’s association with kingship. The Meissen pattern was based on examples in the Kakiemon style from Arita in Japan.
There are no tigers in Japan, but the animal gained potent symbolic status when adopted from Chinese Buddhist culture in the sixth century C.E. The tiger, associated with courage in Japanese culture is also representative of the wind, and when depicted with bamboo the creature can symbolize the wind rustling through bamboo. In the dense and impenetrable bamboo forest the tiger is perceived as the only animal capable of moving through its thickets, and the image on this dish may have a residual reference to the tiger’s symbolic relationship to the wind and the forest.
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 the island of 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, and from a Dutch dealer in Dresden, Elizabeth Bassetouche.
On the Yellow Lion Service see Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 95-96, p.277. For a detailed account see Weber, J., 2013, Meissener Porzellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern: Stiftung Ernst Schneider in Schloss Lustheim, Band II, S. 265-289.
On the Japanese Kakiemon style and its European imitators see Ayers, J., Impey, O., Mallet, J.V.G., 1990, Porcelain for Palaces: the fashion for Japan in Europe 1650-1750; Impey, O., Jörg, J. A., Mason, C., 2009, Dragons, Tigers and Bamboo: Japanese Porcelain and its Impact in Europe, the Macdonald Collection
See also Takeshi Nagataki, 2003, Classic Japanese Porcelain: Imari and Kakiemon.
On the tiger in East Asian animal symbolism see K. M. Ball (1927 and 2004) Animal Motifs in Asian Art.
On the impact of Chinese porcelain on a global scale see Finlay, R., 2010, The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History.
Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 126-127.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1728-1730
1728-1730
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.69.62
catalog number
69.62
accession number
287702
collector/donor number
677

Meissen leaf dish

TITLE: Meissen leaf dishMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: L. 9¼" 23.5cm; W.
Description
TITLE: Meissen leaf dish
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: L. 9¼" 23.5cm; W. 6" 15.3cm
OBJECT NAME: Leaf dish
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1740
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 74.135
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 337
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue’ “26” impressed.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Excahnge, New York, 1943.
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 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 leaf dish has a molded interior with the popular pattern of the “flying fox” or “red and yellow squirrel” painted in onglaze enamel in the Japanese Kakiemon style.
The “red and yellow squirrel” or “flying fox” pattern was popular and reproduced late into the eighteenth century, but like many of the animals seen on Japanese Kakiemon porcelain and its European imitations these creatures are of uncertain species. From China, Japan adopted and made its own a rich mythology and folklore of animals real and imaginary. From the 1660s to the 1780s animals appeared in illustrated Japanese encyclopedias, illustrated catalogs, and cosmologies of the early Edo period with the real world of nature represented alongside the creatures of myth and folklore. The fox in particular lives in the Japanese imagination as a shape-shifting entity, a trickster capable of causing havoc. The red squirrel or fox flying through the air may well represent the multi-tailed kuda-gitsune, a spirit fox with powers of a malevolent or beneficial nature that still appears in contemporary manga, but Japan has a native flying squirrel, and squirrels eating grapes featured in the arts of China since the T’ang dynasty (618-906) as a symbol of fertility. In the Kakiemon style of painting these creatures have playful and fanciful characteristics that emerged in Japanese decorative art of the Edo period.
The animals inhabit a garden landscape where flowering clematis and fruiting grapevines are held in check by brushwood fences.
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 former Hizen Province (now the Saga Prefecture) on the island of Kyushu. The porcelain bears a characteristic style of enamel painting using a palette of translucent colors principally in iron-red, green, sea- green, blue, and pale yellow attributed to a family of painters with the name Kakiemon. Exposure to Japanese porcelain through the Dutch East India Company roused a passion for its collection among the European ruling elite of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many of whom already had amassed large collections of Chinese porcelain.
On the Japanese Kakiemon style and its European imitators see Impey, O., Jörg, J. A., Mason, C., 2009, Dragons, Tigers and Bamboo: Japanese Porcelain and its Impact in Europe, the Macdonald Collection; Ayers, J., Impey, O., Mallet, J.V.G., 1990, Porcelain for Palaces: the fashion for Japan in Europe 1650-1750. See also Takeshi Nagataki, 2003, Classic Japanese Porcelain: Imari and Kakiemon.
For more details and examples of the squirrel pattern see Weber, J., 2013, Meissener Porzellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern: Stiftung Ernst Schneider in Schloss Lustheim, Band II, S. 297-309.
For an example of the early Edo Period encyclopedias see Kashiragaki zōho kinmō zui taisei by Nakamura Tekisai (1629-1702) on http://record.museum.kyushu-u.ac.jp/kinmou/contents6.html
On the Japanese spirit world see Foster, M. D., (2008), Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai.
Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 132-133.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740
1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.74.135
catalog number
74.135
accession number
315259
collector/donor number
337

Meissen vase

TITLE: Meissen vase in double gourd shapeMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen vase in double gourd shape
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 8⅝" 22cm
OBJECT NAME: Vase
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1735
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 64.427
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 407
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “O” impressed (former’s mark).
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
This vase 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.
This double gourd or calabash-shaped vase has a purple onglaze ground with reserves containing onglaze enamel paintings of birds, with on one side of the vase the flowering branches of tree peony and on the other side chrysanthemums in full bloom. Ceramic vessels imitating the shapes of gourds have a long history, almost as long as the use of dried gourds themselves for food storage and consumption. In China gourds were cultivated in Neolithic times and over the centuries the uses and meanings associated with them proliferated in Chinese culture, in particular the association with a gourd’s many seeds as a symbol of fertility. The double-gourd is also the Buddhist emblem of Li T’ieh-kuai, one of the eight immortals who when embodied as a beggar carried the gourd to contain medicine that he administered to the sick. The double-gourd shape imitated in porcelain was, and still is, especially popular for use as an ornament for interior living spaces, now often seen to function as a stand for a table lamp.
The Meissen Manufactory produced vases for a set, or garniture, typically to decorate a mantelpiece or buffet. This gourd-shaped vase probably belonged to a set of three, five, or seven pieces. It was not uncommon to mount a garniture in ormolu, and Meissen sets sold in France were often decorated in this manner. Garnitures remained popular in the nineteenth century, but demand for them declined in the last century. The eighteenth-century baroque and Rococo taste for luxury goods regarded oriental and European porcelain as a feature of interior design; individual items were not appreciated as works of art in the sense that collectors and connoisseurs value them today.
The Saxon Elector and King of Poland, Augustus II, admired the colored ground technique in overglaze enamels, and the director of painting at Meissen, Johann Gregor Höroldt, developed ground colors to match Augustus’s design for interior décor in the Japanese Palace which held his vast collection of ceramic artifacts. Most ground colors were applied to porcelain vessels by flicking a brush loaded with enamel pigment onto the glazed surface which was prepared with a thin layer of gum to hold the color and prevent it from running down the glazed sides of a vessel; in a later technique a fine textile pad loaded with powdered color pigment was used to apply the ground onto a gummed surface. Areas were masked out to reserve a white space for painting. The French Sèvres porcelain manufactory is better known for its development of rich, deep ground colors in the mid-eighteenth century, especially royal blue, pink, and green on soft-paste porcelain.
For examples of vases with colored grounds see Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp.268-274.
On the Japanese Palace see Cassidy-Geiger, M., 1995, “The Japanese Palace Collections and their Impact at Meissen”, in The International Ceramics Fair and Seminar, London, pp. 15-24; 1996, “Meissen Porcelain Ordered for the Japanese Palace”, in Keramos: Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft der Keramikfreunde, pp. 119-130.
On the impact of Chinese porcelain in a global context see Robert Finlay, 2010, The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History.
Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 186-187.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1735
19th century
1735
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.64.427
catalog number
64.427
accession number
257835
collector/donor number
407

Meissen chinoiserie rinsing bowl

TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie rinsing bowlMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H. 3⅜" 8.5cm; D.
Description
TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie rinsing bowl
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 3⅜" 8.5cm; D. 7" 17.8cm
OBJECT NAME: Rinsing bowl
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1723-1724
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 74.131
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 688
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: None
PURCHASED FROM: Hans E. Backer, London, England, 1947.
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 waste bowl in the chinoiserie style belongs to the distinctive period in Meissen’s history that began in 1720 with the arrival from Vienna of Johann Gregor Höroldt (1696-1775). Höroldt brought with him superior skills in enamel painting on porcelain, and his highly significant contribution to Meissen was to develop a palette of very fine bright enamel colors that had so far eluded the team of metallurgists at the manufactory, and that were new to onglaze enamel colors on faience and porcelain in general. Application of the term chinoiserie to this class of Meissen porcelains is problematic, however, because Johann Gregor Höroldt developed his ideas from a variety of sources and referred to the “chinoiseries” as “Japanese” (Japonische) figures, an early modern generic term for exotic artifacts and images imported from the East.
Framed by gold and iron-red enamel scrollwork the bowl has two chinoiserie scenes painted in the style of Johann Gregor Höroldt. On one side a man and a woman in conversation sit at a table laid with delicacies and blue and white porcelain tea wares. A spotted dog sits on the table looking out of the left-hand side of the frame, while an insect as large as a bird hovers over the scene. On the other side a woman throws several fish into a vessel filled with water as a gardener approaches carrying cut flowers. The interior of the bowl contains a painting of a figure in a garden pointing towards something that amuses him outside the picture frame.
Chinoiserie is from the French Chinois (Chinese) and refers to ornamentation that is Chinese-like. The style evolved in Europe as Chinese luxury products began to arrive in the West in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries through the major European trading companies. Artisans were quick to incorporate motifs from these products into their work and to imitate their material qualities, especially the Chinese lacquers, embroidered silks, and porcelains, but their imitation was not informed by first-hand knowledge of China or an understanding of Chinese conventions in two-dimensional representation, and instead a fanciful European vision emerged to become an ornamental style employed in garden and interior design, in cabinet making, faience and porcelain manufacture, and in textiles. Illustrated books began to appear in the second half of the seventeenth century that describe the topography of China, its peoples and their customs, and these sources were copied and used by designers, artists, printmakers, and artisans including Johann Gregor Höroldt at Meissen.
The waste bowl belongs to the same service as a teapot in the collection (ID # 74.130). Meissen tea and coffee services of this early period were often sent as gifts to members of European royalty favored by the Saxon and Polish courts. They served as tokens of loyalty and affection to relatives in other royal houses with family connections to the Saxon House of Wettin. Dinner services were not produced at Meissen until the beginning of the1730s.
On Johann Gregor Höroldt see Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 17-25.
On chinoiserie see Impey, O., 1997, Chinoiserie: the Impact of Oriental Styles on Western Art and Decoration; on the porcelain trade and European exposure to the Chinese product see the exhibition catalog by Emerson, J., Chen, J., Gardner Gates, M., 2000, Porcelain Stories: from China to Europe
On gift-giving see Cassidy-Geiger, M., 2008, Fragile Diplomacy: Meissen Porcelain for European Courts 1710-1763.
Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 76-77.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1723-1724
1723-1724
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.74.131
catalog number
74.131
collector/donor number
688
accession number
315259

Meissen oil pot and cover

TITLE: Meissen oil pot for a Plat de MénageMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen oil pot for a Plat de Ménage
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 6¾" 17.2cm
OBJECT NAME: Oil pot
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1735
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 71.202 a,b
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 714 a,b
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, 1947.
This oil pot 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.
This oil pot was part of a plat de ménage that served as a centerpiece on the dining or banqueting table, also known as an ‘Epargne’ from the French épargner’ meaning to serve and often made in silver or silver gilt. The plat de ménage held cruet sets containing various condiments like olive oil and vinegar, mustard, salt, spices, and sugar for guests to season their food during service in the French style of three main savory courses before the often spectacular dessert. In some services the Meissen modelers designed the vinegar pot with a grimacing mask at the base of the spout whereas the oil pot has a mask that smiles affably (not seen here). The two containers were used for dressing salads and vegetables much as they sometimes do today. The largest vessel on a plat de ménage was the lemon basket and centerpieces were exploited by the Meissen modelers for their sculptural potential by introducing figures and elaborate ornamentation.
The pot has a double scroll handle and the long thin spout allows for better control in pouring the liquid onto the food. The cover has a finial in the shape of an artichoke. Separated by bands of raised egg and dart molding are sprays of oriental or “Indian flowers” (indianische Blumen) and they represent the only stylistic influence from the Far East. This pot and the model identical to it except for the painted subjects (ID#71.201 a,b) derive their shape and ornament from contemporary silver vessels for a plat de ménage. Meissen developed the Indian flowers from Chinese and Japanese motifs with chrysanthemums and peonies featured most frequently on the manufactory’s porcelain.
On the ‘plat de ménage’ see Hantschmann, K., “The ‘plat de ménage’: The Centrepiece on the Banqueting Table”, in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 106-119.
For a similar model see Weber, J., 2013, Meissener Porzellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern: Stiftung Ernst Schneider in Schloss Lusthei, S. 171-173. Johann Joachim Kaendler’s work book records two occasions when he modeled oil and vinegar pots, in June 1733 and January 1734, but it is not clear to which version this pot belongs, see Die Arbeitsberichte des Meissener Porzellanmodelleurs Johann Joachim Kaendler 1706-1775, 2002 , pp.19-20, p. 22.
Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 182-183.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1730-1735
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.71.202ab
accession number
297499
catalog number
71.202ab
collector/donor number
714ab

Meissen chinoiserie stand

TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie standMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: D.
Description
TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie stand
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: D. 11⅞" 30.2cm
OBJECT NAME: Plate
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1730
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 74.132
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 666
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue.
PURCHASED FROM: Hans E. Backer, London, England, 1947.
This stand for an ecuelle 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.
Meissen’s chinoiserie period began in the 1720s following the arrival from Vienna of Johann Gregor Höroldt (1696-1775, who brought with him superior skills in enamel painting on porcelain. His highly significant contribution to Meissen was to develop a palette of very fine bright enamel colors that had so far eluded the team of metallurgists at the manufactory, and that were new to onglaze enamel colors on faience and porcelain in general. Höroldt and his team of painters used these colors to great effect in his singular vision of chinoiserie subjects, many of them based on drawings from what later became known as the Schulz Codex; a facsimile copy of the Schulz Codex can be seen in Rainer Behrend’s Das Meissener Musterbuch für Höroldt-Chinoiserien: Musterblätter aus der Malstube der Meissener Porzellanmanufaktur (Schulz Codex) Leipzig, 1978. Application of the term chinoiserie to this class of Meissen porcelains is problematic, however, because Johann Gregor Höroldt and his painters developed ideas from a variety of sources and Höroldt referred to the “chinoiseries” as “Japanese” (Japonische) figures, an early modern generic term for exotic artifacts and images imported from the East.
The stand, which at one time had an ecuelle, a covered bowl for serving soups or stews, has four reserves on the flange featuring chinoiserie scenes of adults and children strolling in garden settings and servants engaged in the preparation of food and drink. The miniature paintings are framed with scrollwork in gold, iron-red, and purple enamel. The interior of the stand has sprays of Indian flowers (indianische Blumen) that also occur on the flange between the reserves. This style of floral pattern was a Meissen elaboration of chrysanthemums and peonies on Chinese and Japanese porcelains in the royal collections in Dresden. Items like this passed through many hands in Meissen’s painting division where artisans applied specialist skills in the enamel painting of figures, flowers and foliage, gold scrollwork, and the polishing of the gold after firing.
On Johann Gregor Höroldt see Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 17-25.
On chinoiserie see Impey, O., 1977, Chinoiserie: the Impact of Oriental Styles on Western Art and Decoration; on the porcelain trade and European exposure to the Chinese product see the exhibition catalog by Emerson, J., Chen, J., Gardner Gates, M., 2000, Porcelain Stories: from China to Europe; see also the exhibition catalog edited by Bischoff, C., Hennings, A., 2008, Goldener Drache, Weisser Adler: Kunst im Dienste der Macht am Kaiserhof von China und am sächsische-polnischen Hof (1644-1795).
Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 86-87.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1730
1730
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.74.132
catalog number
74.132
collector/donor number
666
accession number
315259

Meissen: two vases

TITLE: Meissen: Pair of vasesMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen: Pair of vases
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 11⅝" 29.6cm
OBJECT NAME: Pair of vases
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1725-1735
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 64.428 AB
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 735 AB
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue.
PURCHASED FROM: Hans E. Backer, London, England, 1947.
This pair of vases 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 two vases are not an identical pair, and the form is similar to earlier Meissen vessels made in Johann Friedrich Böttger’s red stoneware. The onglaze enamel painting is in the so-called Indian flowers style (indianische Blumen), a Meissen genre developed from Chinese and Japanese prototypes that typically features heavy growth of stylized chrysanthemums and peonies emerging from a rocky garden with birds and insects flying above or sheltering under the blossoms. Many of the vases with this type of pattern were made for Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and delivered to the Japanese Palace, but these two vases do not have the customary AR (Augustus Rex) mark that usually identifies such pieces, some of which are impressive and made in groups of seven as garnitures for installation in the Palace or sent to other European courts as diplomatic gifts.
In early eighteenth-century Europe “Indian” referred to imported luxury goods that came from India and the Far East principally through the Dutch and English East India Companies, but with no specific reference to the Indian subcontinent. For the Dutch and English East India Companies the trade in spices, tea, and textiles was much larger and more profitable than in porcelain or other luxuries like laquer goods, furniture made from exotic woods, and gemstones. European trade with the East was complex and fluid, achieved through several international trading ports in the South China Sea, the Indonesian Archipelago, and the Indian subcontinent, with the Dutch in particular engaging in inter-Asian trade of commodities like copper that did not reach European shores in large quantities.
For other examples of Meissen porcelain in the Indian flowers style see Weber, J., 2013, Meissener Porzellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern: Stiftung Ernst Schneider in Schloss Lustheim, pp. 436-444 Vasen mit indianischen Blumen ; den Blaauwen, A. L., 2000, Meissen Porcelain in the Rijksmuseum, pp.50-61.
On the English East India Company see for example, Lawson, P., 2014, The East India Company: A History; on the Dutch East India Company and its trade with Japan in commodities like copper see Yasuko Suzuki, 2012, Japan-Netherlands Trade 1600-1800: the Dutch East India Company and Beyond. On the impact of Chinese porcelain on a global scale see Finlay, R., 2010, The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 184-185.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1725-1735
1725-1735
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.64.428B
catalog number
64.428B
collector/donor number
735B
accession number
257835

Meissen tea bowl and saucer

MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; two small incised crosses (former’s mark).PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.This tea bowl and saucer is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr.
Description
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; two small incised crosses (former’s mark).
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
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.
Meissen’s chinoiserie period began in the 1720s following the arrival from Vienna of Johann Gregor Höroldt (1696-1775) who brought with him superior skills in enamel painting on porcelain. His highly significant contribution to Meissen was to develop a palette of very fine bright enamel colors that had so far eluded the team of metallurgists at the manufactory, and that were new to onglaze enamel colors on faience and porcelain in general.
The tea bowl and saucer are painted with chinoiseries in the style associated with Johann Ehrenfried Stadler (1701-1741) who worked for Peter Eggebrecht’s Dresden faience manufactory before employment at Meissen. His work is associated with figures that stand, run or trot along fenced terraces carrying fans, kites or parasols beside exuberant flowers and foliage. On the saucer a man walks in a garden carrying a parasol, and on the tea bowl a man runs carrying a fan with an exotic bird flying overhead. Diaper and foliate patterned borders circle the interiors of the pieces.
Chinoiserie is from the French Chinois (Chinese) and refers to ornamentation that is Chinese-like. The style evolved in Europe as Chinese luxury products began to arrive in the West in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries through the major European trading companies. Artisans were quick to incorporate motifs from these products into their work and to imitate their material qualities, especially the Chinese lacquers, embroidered silks, and porcelains, but their imitation was not informed by first-hand knowledge of China or an understanding of Chinese conventions in two-dimensional representation, and instead a fanciful European vision emerged to become an ornamental style employed in garden and interior design, in cabinet making, faience and porcelain manufacture, and in textiles. Illustrated books began to appear in the second half of the seventeenth century that describe the topography of China, its peoples and their customs, and these sources were copied and used by designers, artists, printmakers, and artisans including Johann Gregor Höroldt at Meissen. Application of the term chinoiserie to this class of Meissen porcelains is problematic, however, because Johann Gregor Höroldt developed his ideas from a variety of sources and referred to the “chinoiseries” as “Japanese” (Japonische) figures, an early modern generic term for exotic artifacts and images imported from the East.
On Johann Gregor Höroldt see Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 17-25.
On chinoiserie see Impey, O., 1997, Chinoiserie: the Impact of Oriental Styles on Western Art and Decoration; on the porcelain trade and European exposure to the Chinese product see the exhibition catalog by Emerson, J., Chen, J., Gardner Gates, M., 2000, Porcelain Stories: from China to Europe
Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 90-91.
TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie tea bowl and saucer
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Tea bowl: H. 1¾"4.5cm, Saucer: D. 4⅝" 11.8cm
OBJECT NAME: tea bowl and saucer
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1725-35
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 76.365 a,b
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 283
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1725-1735
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.76.365ab
catalog number
76.365ab
accession number
1977.0166
collector/donor number
283ab

Meissen figure of a doe

TITLE: Meissen figure of a doeMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 2⅝" 6.7 cm.OBJECT NAME: Animal figurePLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1740-60SUBJECT: The Hans Syz CollectionArtDomestic Furn
Description
TITLE: Meissen figure of a doe
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 2⅝" 6.7 cm.
OBJECT NAME: Animal figure
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1740-60
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 76.374
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 361
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARK: None
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
This animal figure 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 doe seated without a base is possibly modeled on a print by Johann Elias Ridinger (1698-1767), one of four images titled Deer in the Wild. Ridinger was a painter, draughtsman, etcher and engraver, and a publisher of prints specializing in animal subjects. On the other hand, the figure may have originated from Kaendler’s own observations of live animals in the Elector of Saxony’s game reserve. Small animal figures of this kind were assembled for a dessert table celebrating the hunt at a court banquet.
Deer were high status game in the extravagant hunts conducted by the royal and princely courts in eighteenth-century Europe. A hunt was obligatory during the many court festivities held to mark betrothals, marriages, peace treaties, and feast days, but hunting inflicted a heavy toll on the environment. Game like red deer and wild boar were kept in hunting preserves that enclosed large tracts of woodland, and their presence in large numbers degraded the new growth of the forest. It was common practice to shoot game driven in herds across the line of fire, and in order to maintain sufficient numbers animals were caught in the wild and transported to the hunting preserves.
Eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers criticized the royal and princely hunting administrations for the damage caused to the environment, especially the shortage of wood caused by degradation of the forests.
These small figures of animals were used for decorating the dessert table for festive banquets associated with the hunt. They formed part of the design in conjunction with decorations sculpted in sugar and other materials to create an elaborate display for the final course of the meal. The practice of sculpting in sugar, marzipan, butter, and ice for the festive table goes back for many centuries, and porcelain figures were a late addition to the tradition.
Meissen figures and figure groups are usually sculpted in special modeling clay and then carefully cut into separate pieces from which individual molds are made. Porcelain clay is then pressed into the molds and the whole figure or group reassembled to its original form, a process requiring great care and skill. The piece is then dried thoroughly before firing in the kiln. In the production of complex figure groups the work is arduous and requires the making of many molds from the original model.
The animal is painted in overglaze enamel colors.
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., and Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie 1710-1815, pp. 61-67.
On the hunt see Kroll, M., 2004, ‘Hunting in the Eighteenth Century: An Environmental Perspective’ in Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung Vol. 9, No. 3, pp.9-36.
On the dessert table see Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, 'The Hof Conditorey in Dresden: Traditions and Innovations in Sugar and Porcelain', in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie 1710-1815, pp. 121-131.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 480-481.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1750
1750
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.76.374
catalog number
76.374
accession number
1977.0166
collector/donor number
361

Meissen pair of pug dogs

TITLE: Meissen: Pair of pug dogsMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 4½" 11.4cm.OBJECT NAME: Animal figuresPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1740SUBJECT: The Hans Syz CollectionArtDomestic Furn
Description
TITLE: Meissen: Pair of pug dogs
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 4½" 11.4cm.
OBJECT NAME: Animal figures
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1740
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 66.168 A,B
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 60 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.
These animal figures are from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in Germany, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
Johann Joachim Kaendler(1706-1775) received a commission to model several pug dogs in 1740-1741, and in 1736 his work book records the re-modeling of 4 cane handles with pugs (“4 Stock Hacken mit Mops geandert…”). Pugs, or “Mops” in German, are an ancient breed known in China in at least 500 BCE, and a favored dog in the imperial court in about the 1st century. Pugs became popular lap dogs after they were introduced to Europe by Dutch merchants in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, especially in Holland and England. By the eighteenth century it was de rigeur for aristocratic men and women to own pugs with their even temperament and sociability towards humans. Several Meissen models exist with a woman holding a pug, and with pugs peeping out from under wide crinoline skirts.
It appears that one of the motives behind many of Kaendler’s commissions for pugs was an emblematic one for the Order of the Pug, a secret society modeled on Freemasonry. Pope Clement XII forbade Roman Catholics to join a Freemasons Lodge, and the Order of the Pug was a ruse to side-step his edict.
Meissen models of pugs are numerous and they are found in many public and private collections. Count Heinrich von Brühl, (1700-1763) who held high office in Saxony during the electoral rule of Frederick Augustus III (1696-1763), was very fond of pugs and his favorite dog was modeled by Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775) in life size. In October 1741 Kaendler records modeling a new snuff box for Count Brühl with a pug represented on the lid (Die Arbeitsberichte des Meissener Porzellanmodelleurs Johann Joachim Kaendler 1706-1775, 2002, p.83).
Count Heinrich von Brühl became director of the Meissen manufactory in 1733. Under Friedrich August III (1696-1763) the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, von Brühl held high office, and in 1746 became the first individual to hold the position of Prime Minister in the State. He was immensely wealthy and lived extravagantly. Many commissions undertaken by the Meissen Manufactory between 1733 and the outbreak of the Seven Years War in 1756 were for Count Brühl.
Meissen figures and figure groups are usually sculpted in special modeling clay and then cut carefully into separate pieces from which individual molds are made. Porcelain clay is then pressed into the molds and the whole figure or group reassembled to its original form, a process requiring great care and skill. The piece is then dried thoroughly before firing in the kiln. In the production of complex figure groups the work is arduous and requires the making of many molds from the original model.
The animals are painted in overglaze enamel colors and gold.
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 Meissen’s pugs see pp. 307-308.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 478-479.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740-1745
1740-1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.66.168A
catalog number
66.168A
accession number
270694
collector/donor number
60A

Meissen chocolate cup and saucer

TITLE: Meissen chocolate cup and saucerMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 2¾" 7cm; Saucer: D.
Description
TITLE: Meissen chocolate cup and saucer
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 2¾" 7cm; Saucer: D. 5⅛" 13.1cm
OBJECT NAME: Chocolate cup and saucer
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1740
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 75.188 ab
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 810 ab
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “6” impressed on cup; “2” impressed on saucer.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1948.
This chocolate 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.
This cup and saucer carries the “Red Dragon” pattern that was reserved for the use of the royal household. Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, ordered a dinner service to be made around 1728-1730 with the pattern based on Japanese motifs that were in turn based on Chinese prototypes, and it was one of the earliest such services to be made at Meissen. His son, Friedrich Augustus III, ordered a tea and coffee service in about 1740, and it is likely that chocolate cups and saucers served as breakfast items within the set.
The design was attractive to Augustus II partly because of its symbolism, and although many of the motifs on Chinese and Japanese artefacts were opaque to Europeans, it was known that the long dragon represented the Chinese emperor and the so-called phoenix represented the empress. In Chinese culture the dragon and phoenix motifs have a very long history inflected with different meanings over time, and their prototypes are evident on Neolithic ceramics, Shang and Zhou dynasty bronzes. The “phoenix’ in Chinese and Japanese mythology is not the same as the bird that renews itself in fire according to Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures. The Chinese feng-huang and the Japanese hō-ō bird represent benevolence and wisdom, inhabiting the air and alighting on earth only at times of harmony and stability. Phoenix was a name chosen to represent the mystical bird by western observers and scholars of Chinese and Japanese cultures because of its superficial similarity to the fire bird or phoenix.
The prototype for the design is difficult to verify as there is no record of a Japanese example in the royal collections in Dresden, and there is a theory that the pattern originated at Meissen and was copied by Japanese porcelain painters in Arita after 1740 (Ayers, J., Impey, O., Mallet, J.V.G., 1990, Porcelain for Palaces: the fashion for Japan in Europe 1650-1750, p. 262). Japanese versions made before 1730 do exist, and another theory suggests the possibility that the pattern was introduced to Meissen by the Parisian dealer Rodolphe Lemaire and copied for the Paris luxury market where Lemaire sold Meissen pieces passed off as Japanese originals, which were highly sought after and more expensive even than Meissen porcelain (Weber, J., 2013, Meissener Pozellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern: Stiftung Ernst Schneider in Schloss Lustheim, pp. 246-264).
Between the two dragons on the saucer and below the rim of the cup are some of the eight auspicious signs: the pearl, the coin, the scrolls, the wheel, and the artemisia leaf. The Meissen design differs slightly from the Japanese originals. Named the “Red Court Dragon” service, this pattern was reserved for the royal Saxon court until November 1918 when King Friedrich August III abdicated following the establishment of the Republic of Saxony. A modified design is in production at Meissen today.
Hot chocolate was a luxury drink usually taken at breakfast and often drunk while still in bed requiring two handles for greater security against spills.
For examples of a plate from the dinner service and two cups and saucers from the tea and coffee service see Pietsch, U., 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: the Wark Collection from the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, pp.456-458.
For examples of Dutch enameled dragon and phoenix patterns on both Meissen and Chinese porcelain see Ayers, J., Impey, O., Mallet, J.V.G., 1990, Porcelain for Palaces: the fashion for Japan in Europe 1650-1750,p. 242-243. On the symbolism of the dragon see Shono, M., 1973, Japanisches Aritaporzellan im sogenannten „Kakiemonstil” als Vorbild für die Meissener Porzellanmanufaktur, S. 24.
On the impact of chinese porcelain in a global context see Finlay, R., The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History.
Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 132-133.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740
1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.75.188ab
catalog number
75.188ab
collector/donor number
810
accession number
319073

Meissen plate

TITLE: Meissen plateMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: D.
Description
TITLE: Meissen plate
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: D. 9¼" 23.5cm
OBJECT NAME: Plate
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1745
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 62.844
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 373
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “16” impressed.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
This plate 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 plate has a shallow relief pattern of floral spays known as “Gotzkowsky raised flowers” (erhabene Blumen). Painted in overglaze enamels where the relief pattern is absent are German flowers (deutsche Blumen). European flowers began to appear on Meissen porcelain in about 1740 as the demand for Far Eastern patterns became less dominant and more high quality printed sources became available in conjunction with growing interest in the scientific study of flora and fauna. For German flowers Meissen painters referred to Johann Wilhelm Weinmann’s publication, the Phytantoza Iconographia (Nuremberg 1737-1745), in which many of the plates were engraved 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. Gold painting and polishing was the work of another division of specialists in the Meissen manufactory.
Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky (1710-1775) and his brother Christian Ludwig opened a business for the sale of luxury goods in Berlin in 1730, and are recorded in 1737as having business dealings with the Meissen Manufactory. Gotzkowsky was the Prussian court’s representative at the annual Leipzig Fair and in 1761 he founded the Royal Porcelain Manufactory (Königliche Porzellan Manufaktur) in Berlin. An outstanding entrepreneur, banker, art dealer and merchant until ruined by bankruptcy in 1763, Gotzkowsky was one of the first businessmen to commission a table service from the Meissen Manufactory. Originally modeled by Johann Friedrich Eberlein (1695-1749) in 1741, the pattern marks a break with the formality of the basket weave designs, and it was used for the table service made as a gift for Empress Elizabeth of Russia in 1744.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower painters were usually 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 preference for floral decoration on domestic “china” continues into our own time, but with the exception of a manufactory like Meissen, where hand painting is still practiced, most floral patterns are now applied by transfers and are not painted directly onto the porcelain.
On the Gotzkowsky relief pattern see Reinheckel, G., 1968, ‘Plastiche Dekorationsformen im Meissner Porzellan des 18 Jahrhunderts’ in Keramos, 41/42, Juli/Oktober, p. 76-77.
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 Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky and his Berlin porcelain enterprise see Baer, W., Baer, I., Grosskopf-Knaack, S., 1986, Von Gotzkowsky zur KPM: aus der Frühzeit des friderizianischen Porzellans.
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, pp. 364-365.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740-1745
1740-1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.245497.12
catalog number
245497.12
accession number
245497
collector/donor number
373

Meissen: two vases

TITLE: Meissen: Pair of vasesMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen: Pair of vases
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 11⅝" 29.6cm
OBJECT NAME: Pair of vases
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1725-1735
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 64.428 AB
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 735 AB
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue.
PURCHASED FROM: Hans E. Backer, London, England, 1947.
This pair of vases 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 two vases are not an identical pair, and the form is similar to earlier Meissen vessels made in Johann Friedrich Böttger’s red stoneware. The onglaze enamel painting is in the so-called Indian flowers style (indianische Blumen), a Meissen genre developed from Chinese and Japanese prototypes that typically features heavy growth of stylized chrysanthemums and peonies emerging from a rocky garden with birds and insects flying above or sheltering under the blossoms. Many of the vases with this type of pattern were made for Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and delivered to the Japanese Palace, but these two vases do not have the customary AR (Augustus Rex) mark that usually identifies such pieces, some of which are impressive and made in groups of seven as garnitures for installation in the Palace or sent to other European courts as diplomatic gifts.
In early eighteenth-century Europe “Indian” referred to imported luxury goods that came from India and the Far East principally through the Dutch and English East India Companies, but with no specific reference to the Indian subcontinent. For the Dutch and English East India Companies the trade in spices, tea, and textiles was much larger and more profitable than in porcelain or other luxuries like laquer goods, furniture made from exotic woods, and gemstones. European trade with the East was complex and fluid, achieved through several international trading ports in the South China Sea, the Indonesian Archipelago, and the Indian subcontinent, with the Dutch in particular engaging in inter-Asian trade of commodities like copper that did not reach European shores in large quantities.
For other examples of Meissen porcelain in the Indian flowers style see Weber, J., 2013, Meissener Porzellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern: Stiftung Ernst Schneider in Schloss Lustheim, pp. 436-444 Vasen mit indianischen Blumen ; den Blaauwen, A. L., 2000, Meissen Porcelain in the Rijksmuseum, pp.50-61.
On the English East India Company see for example, Lawson, P., 2014, The East India Company: A History; on the Dutch East India Company and its trade with Japan in commodities like copper see Yasuko Suzuki, 2012, Japan-Netherlands Trade 1600-1800: the Dutch East India Company and Beyond. On the impact of Chinese porcelain on a global scale see Finlay, R., 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. 184-185.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1725-1735
1725-1735
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.64.428A
catalog number
64.428A
collector/donor number
735A
accession number
257835

Meissen figure: a pair of nesting birds

TITLE: Meissen: A pair of nesting birdsMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 3 ⅛" 8 cm.OBJECT NAME: Bird figuresPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1750SUBJECT: The Hans Syz CollectionArtDomestic
Description
TITLE: Meissen: A pair of nesting birds
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 3 ⅛" 8 cm.
OBJECT NAME: Bird figures
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: 78.432 A,B
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 398, 405, 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, 1943.
These canaries caring for their hatchlings are from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in Germany, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
Johann Joachim Kaendler (1776-1775) began to model birds in 1733 soon after his appointment to the Meissen manufactory. He studied exotic birds kept in the Saxon Elector’s aviaries at Moritzburg Castle near Dresden, but his models of native European birds were also observed with care, and he invested all his avian subjects with characteristics typical of their species. Canaries are not native to Europe, but by the eighteenth century German breeders were known for their skill in raising birds with particularly fine singing abilities. This particular model is one of Kaendler’s earliest, recorded in the manufactory archives in January 1733 as ‘a canary bird nest, in which are found three young by an unbroken egg, and the adult canary bird perches on the nest feeding the young.’ The two items seen here are almost identical in form. Other models have two birds on a nest, and typical species represented are canaries and finches, both of which were popular for their songs and kept as pets in ornamental cages. Kaendler modeled at least three bird sellers, one based on Christophe Huet’s Cris de Paris series in collaboration with Peter Reinicke, another of unspecified graphic origin, and yet another based on the Cryes of the City of London series after the engraving ‘ Buy a fine singing bird’ in Pierce Tempest’s publication of 1688. The original drawings were by Marcellus Laroon. See the ‘Quack Doctor with monkey’ (74.140) from the same series.
Meissen figures and figure groups are usually sculpted in special modeling clay and then cut carefully into separate pieces from which individual molds are made. Porcelain clay is then pressed into the molds and the whole figure or group reassembled to its original form, a process requiring great care and skill. The piece is then dried thoroughly before firing in the kiln. In the production of complex figure groups the work is arduous and requires the making of many molds from the original model. The nest is made of fine extrusions passed through metal dyes or mesh.
The group is painted in overglaze enamel colors.
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.
See Die Arbeitsberichte des Meissener Porzellanmodelleurs Johann Joachim Kaendler 1706-1775,2002, p.18. 3. 1 Canari Vogel Nest, worinnen sich 3 junge nebst einem unausgebrütetem Ey befinden, und the alte Canari Vogel auf dem Nest sitzet und die jungen füttert.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 484-485.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1750
1750
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.78.432A
catalog number
78.432A
collector/donor number
398
accession number
1978.2185

Meissen coffee pot and cover

TITLE: Meissen coffeepot and coverMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen coffeepot and cover
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 7¾" 19.7cm
OBJECT NAME: Coffeepot
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1725-1735
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 69.81 a,b
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 660
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “ .+.” impressed former’s mark.
PURCHASED FROM: Hans Backer, London, England, 1947.
This coffeepot 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 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 are quatrefoil in horizontal section and have alternating panels of white and purple luster. Painted in the white panels are leopard-like creatures under blue bamboo and flowering vines in the Japanese Kakiemon style. Within the purple luster panels small reserves in white contain birds perched on branches and the luster is painted over with a gilt trellis pattern. The signature Japanese Kakiemon motif usually depicts a tiger with bamboo, but on this Meissen version the animal’s spots suggest a leopard which might have been the Meissen painter’s choice or an export design originating in Arita, Japan. A spotted leopard-like feline can be seen cavorting with tigers in the early encyclopedia of Tekisai Nakamura, the Kinmōzuii of 1666 (http://record.museum.kyushu-u.ac.jp/kinmou/nk156.html). Japan has no wild tigers or leopards and images of these creatures came from China. In the Kakiemon-style of painting these wild creatures assumed a stylized and more playful aspect with the bamboo represented as an abstracted reference to their Asian mainland habitat.
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 through the island of Dejima, 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.
On Kakiemon porcelain see Impey, O., Jörg, J. A., Mason, C., 2009, Dragons, Tigers and Bamboo: Japanese Porcelain and its Impact in Europe, the Macdonald Collection; see also Takeshi Nagataki, 2003, Classic Japanese Porcelain: Imari and Kakiemon, and Ayers, J., Impey, O., Mallet, J.V.G., 1990, Porcelain for Palaces: the Fashion for Japan in Europe 1650-1750.
On animal symbolism see K. M. Ball (1927 and 2004) Animal Motifs in Asian Art.
Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 124-125.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1725-1735
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.69.81ab
catalog number
69.81ab
accession number
287702
collector/donor number
660ab

Meissen tea bowl and saucer (part of a service)

TITLE: Meissen tea and coffee service (incomplete)MAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Coffeepot and cover: H. 9¼" 23.5cm; Cream jug and cover: H. 5⅜" 13.7cm;Teapot and cover: H. 4½" 11.4cm; Rinsing bowl: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen tea and coffee service (incomplete)
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Coffeepot and cover: H. 9¼" 23.5cm; Cream jug and cover: H. 5⅜" 13.7cm;
Teapot and cover: H. 4½" 11.4cm; Rinsing bowl: H. 3⅜" 8.5cm;
Sugar bowl and cover: H. 4¼" 10.8cm; Cup and saucer (468): Cup: H. 2¾" 7cm,
Saucer: D. 5¼" 13.3 cm; Cup and saucer (469) Cup: H. 1¾" 4.5cm,
Saucer: D. 5¼" 13.3cm;
Tea bowl and saucer: Bowl: H. 1¾" 4.5cm; Saucer: D. 2¾" 7cm
OBJECT NAME: Tea and coffee service
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1750-1760
SUBJECT:
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: The Hans Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 61.69 A-H
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 462-470 A-H
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “W” in purple on most pieces (painter’s mark); various impressed numbers (2,4,24,53,59,64,66).
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
This cup and saucer is from a tea and coffee 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.
All the items from this tea and coffee service have elaborate overglaze polychrome rococo cartouches of vines, scrolls, and trellises framing harbor scenes with accessory figures at work on or near the water, and pastoral scenes featuring the elegant so-called “Watteau” figures. Sources for enamel painted harbor scenes and landscapes came from the vast number of prints after paintings by Italian, Dutch, and Flemish masters of the seventeenth century that formed a major part of Meissen’s output from the early 1730s until the 1760s. 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) and Jan van de Velde (1593-1641). Here the idealized landscapes and harbor scenes form the setting through which the nobility and landed gentry walk, ride, and take their ease, surveying their possessions removed from the formality of the court. In the early 1740s the manufactory began to acquire a collection of copperplate engravings on which the Meissen painters based their “Watteauszenen” (Watteau scenes), and they became so much in demand that eleven painters were appointed to specialize in work on this theme. Meissen used the shapes of the pieces in this service many times with some variation on details like handles, spouts, and finials.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Enamel painters specializing in landscapes and subjects with figures 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.
The “W” painted in purple possibly refers to the painter’s mark of Johann Benjamin Wentzel (or Wenzel 1696?-1765) who appears in the Meissen records as a painter of “landscapes and views” in 1750.
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 and prints 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. 334-335.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1750-1760
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.61.69Gab
catalog number
61.69Gab
collector/donor number
469
accession number
240074

Meissen figure of a stag

TITLE: Meissen figure of a stagMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 7⅝" 19.4 cmOBJECT NAME: Animal figurePLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1750SUBJECT: The Hans Syz CollectionArtDomestic Furnis
Description
TITLE: Meissen figure of a stag
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 7⅝" 19.4 cm
OBJECT NAME: Animal figure
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: 76.373
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 344
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARK: Crossed swords in underglaze blue.
PURCHASED FROM: Arthur S. Vernay Inc., New York, 1943.
This animal figure 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
One of master modeler Johann Joachim Kaendler’s (1706-1775) great strengths was his skill for modeling animals. He made life studies of animals and birds in the menagerie and aviary of the Dresden court, but one abiding eighteenth-century passion was the hunt, and deer hunting especially so. The stag represented here, and probably modeled by Kaendler, is a ‘royal’ stag marked by the twelve points or tines on the antlers. The stag is possibly modeled on a print by Johann Elias Ridinger (1698-1767), one of four images titled Deer in the Wild. Ridinger was a painter, draughtsman, etcher and engraver, and a publisher of prints specializing in animal subjects. It is also known that Kaendler drew animals from life, probably using for his sources the Elector of Saxony’s stock of wild game corralled for hunting.
Deer were high status game in the extravagant hunts conducted by the royal and princely courts in eighteenth-century Europe. A hunt was obligatory during the many court festivities held to mark betrothals, marriages, peace treaties, and feast days, but hunting inflicted a heavy toll on the environment. Game like red deer and wild boar were kept in hunting preserves that enclosed large tracts of woodland, and their presence in large numbers degraded the new growth of the forest. It was common practice to shoot game driven in herds across the line of fire, and in order to maintain sufficient numbers of animals many were caught in the wild and transported to the hunting preserves. Eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers criticized the royal and princely hunting administrations for the damage caused to the environment, especially the shortage of wood caused by degradation of the forests.
These small figures of animals were used for decorating the dessert table for festive banquets associated with the hunt. They formed part of the design in conjunction with decorations sculpted in sugar and other materials to create an elaborate display for the final course of the meal. The practice of sculpting in sugar, marzipan, butter, and ice for the festive table goes back for many centuries, and porcelain figures were a late addition to the tradition.
Meissen figures and figure groups are usually sculpted in special modeling clay and then carefully cut into separate pieces from which individual molds are made. Porcelain clay is then pressed into the molds and the whole figure or group reassembled to its original form, a process requiring great care and skill. The piece is then dried thoroughly before firing in the kiln. In the production of complex figure groups the work is arduous and requires the making of many molds from the original model.
The animal is painted in overglaze enamel colors.
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 the hunt see Kroll, M., 2004, ‘Hunting in the Eighteenth Century: An Environmental Perspective’ in Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung Vol. 9, No. 3, pp.9-36
On decorating the dessert table see Cassidy-Geiger, M. "The Hof-Conditorey in Dresden: Traditions and Innovations in Sugar and Porcelain", in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie 1710-1815, pp. 121-131.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 480-481.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1755
1755
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.76.373
catalog number
76.373
accession number
1977.0166
collector/donor number
344

Meissen figure group: a pair of lovers

TITLE: Meissen: A pair of loversMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 5⅝" 14.4 cm.OBJECT NAME: Figure groupPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1740-1745SUBJECT: The Hans Syz CollectionArtDomestic
Description
TITLE: Meissen: A pair of lovers
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 5⅝" 14.4 cm.
OBJECT NAME: Figure group
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: 66.173
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 848
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: None
PURCHASED FROM: Leopold Blumka, New York, 1949.
PROVENANCE: Ex Coll. Oscar Bondy.
This figure group 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.
Modeled in several versions, Meissen figure groups depicting lovers began to appear in the late 1730s and early 1740s. Particularly well known are the so-called crinoline figure groups based on the fashionable balloon skirts worn by women following the French court style and displaying the social intimacies of court life. In this figure group the couple follow more closely the erotic subject matter of the painter François Boucher (1703-1770). Count Heinrich von Brühl (1696-1763) collected works by Boucher, and commissioned work from the Meissen modelers based on Boucher’s drawings and prints in his collection; many of these works are now in the collection of The Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Engravings after William Hogarth’s (1697-1764) The Rake’s Progress series depicting The Orgy also served as the base from which the Meissen modelers interpreted several amorous figure groups.
Count Heinrich von Brühl became director of the Meissen manufactory in 1733. Under Friedrich August III (1696-1763) the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, von Brühl held high office, and in 1746 became the first individual to hold the position of Prime Minister in the State. He was immensely wealthy and lived extravagantly. Many commissions undertaken by the Meissen Manufactory between 1733 and the outbreak of the Seven Years War in 1756 were for Count Brühl.
Meissen figures and figure groups were usually modeled in clay, and then carefully cut into separate pieces from which individual molds were made. Porcelain clay was then pressed into the molds and the whole figure or group reassembled to its original state, a process requiring great care and skill. The piece was then dried thoroughly before firing in the kiln. In the production of complex figure groups the work was arduous and required the making of many molds from the original model.
The male figure is dressed in Spanish style, and the group is painted in overglaze enamel colors and gold.
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.
This model is attributed to Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775) or to Johann Friedrich Eberlein (1696-1749). See Yvonne Adams, 2001, Meissen Figures 1730-1775: The Kaendler Years, p.55.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, p.428-429.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740-1745
1740-1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.66.173
catalog number
66.173
accession number
270694
collector/donor number
848

Meissen plate: one of a pair

TITLE: Meissen: Pair of platesMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: D.10⅛" 25.7cmOBJECT NAME: PlatesPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1763-1774SUBJECT: The Hans Syz CollectionArtDomestic FurnishingIndustry
Description
TITLE: Meissen: Pair of plates
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: D.10⅛" 25.7cm
OBJECT NAME: Plates
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1763-1774
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 78.428 AB
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 5 AB
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords with dot in underglaze blue.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1941.
These plates are 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 two plates with petal-shaped edges and brown rim lines have sprays of naturalistic flowers offset in their centers with scattered blooms on the rims, all painted in onglaze enamels. 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) Meissen painters referred to Johann Wilhelm Weinmann’s publication, the 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 this 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. 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. 398-399.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1763-1764
1763-1764
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.78.428A
catalog number
78.428A
collector/donor number
5A
accession number
1978.2185

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