Domestic Furnishings

Tiffany Floor Lamp

Washboards, armchairs, lamps, and pots and pans may not seem to be museum pieces. But they are invaluable evidence of how most people lived day to day, last week or three centuries ago. The Museum's collections of domestic furnishings comprise more than 40,000 artifacts from American households. Large and small, they include four houses, roughly 800 pieces of furniture, fireplace equipment, spinning wheels, ceramics and glass, family portraits, and much more.

The Arthur and Edna Greenwood Collection contains more than 2,000 objects from New England households from colonial times to mid-1800s. From kitchens of the past, the collections hold some 3,300 artifacts, ranging from refrigerators to spatulas. The lighting devices alone number roughly 3,000 lamps, candleholders, and lanterns.

Place: Meissen

Meissen figure group of Dutch peasants dancing

TITLE: Meissen figure group of Dutch peasants dancingMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 5½" 14 cmOBJECT NAME: Figure groupPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1746-1750SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Coll
Description
TITLE: Meissen figure group of Dutch peasants dancing
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 5½" 14 cm
OBJECT NAME: Figure group
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1746-1750
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 76.370
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 526
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: crossed swords in underglaze blue.
PURCHASED FROM: Paul Lane, 1944.
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.
Johann Friedrich Eberlein (1696-1749) modeled the figures of Dutch Peasants (Holländische Bauern)based on a work with the title Gustus (Latin for taste or appetite) by the artist Gottfried Bernhard Göz (1708-1774) who specialized in genre subjects and large scale allegorical and religious works.
With Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775) Eberlein made a series of figures of peasants engaged in various activities like taking a goat to market, cutting wood (see ID number 75.189), playing the hurdy-gurdy, harvesting produce, taking snuff, drinking, and individual figures dancing. Another model of dancing peasants, but more finely dressed, was made by Eberlein in about 1740. Used by the court confectioners for table decorations these figures augmented the structures made out of sugar and other materials for the elaborate displays designed to serve the dessert on festive occasions. The Dresden court dressed themselves as rural peasants at these events with the pretense of entering a way of life the social elites observed but did not experience.
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 group is painted in overglaze enamel colors.
On Bernhard Goz see Möller, K.A., “ ’…fine copper pieces for the factory…’Meissen Pieces based on Graphic Originals”, and 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” both authors in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie 1710-1815, p.88 and pp.61-67.
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. See also Ivan Day, 'Sculpture for the Eighteenth Century Garden Dessert', in
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 436-437.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740-1750
1740-1750
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.76.370
catalog number
76.370
collector/donor number
526
accession number
1977.0166

Meissen plate

TITLE: Meissen plate with pierced flangeMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: D.
Description
TITLE: Meissen plate with pierced flange
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: D. 9¼" 23.5cm
OBJECT NAME: Plate
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: 63.245
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 438
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords with dot in underglaze blue; “10” impressed.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
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, with a pierced flange, has overglaze enamel painted floral sprays in the center and in the three reserves with rococo frames. 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 German flowers (deutsche Blumen) the 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.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower and fruit painters were paid less than workers who specialized in figures and landscapes, and most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage. Details in gold were applied by specialists in gold painting and polishing at Meissen. 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, where hand painting is still practiced, most floral patterns are now applied by transfers and are not painted directly onto the porcelain.
Following the appointment to the manufactory in 1733 of court sculptor Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775), modeling techniques became more sophisticated. The process of creating shallow relief patterns like this basket weave trellis was laborious and required considerable skill and openwork of this kind is challenging to produce in ceramic manufactures as distortion can occur more easily at any stage. The sources for designs in relief came from pattern books and engravings, especially those by the French designer Jean Bérain the Elder (1638-1711), and the Nuremberg designer Paul Decker (1677-1713) among many others. Later rococo designs in the French style were disseminated through the German states principally by François Cuvilliés the Elder (1695-1768). These designs were applied in architecture, interior stucco work and wood carving, furniture, wall coverings, and ceramics.
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.
On relief patterns and three dimensional modeling at Meissen see Reinheckel, G., 1968, ‘Plastiche Dekorationsformen im Meissner Porzellan des 18 Jahrhunderts’ in Keramos, 41/42, Juli/Oktober.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 388-389.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1763-1764
1763-1764
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.63.249
catalog number
63.249
collector/donor number
438
accession number
250446
collector/donor number
438a

Meissen figure group representing the grape harvest

TITLE: Meissen figure group of children with a wine caskMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 8¾" 22.3 cm.OBJECT NAME: Figure groupPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1760SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Col
Description
TITLE: Meissen figure group of children with a wine cask
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 8¾" 22.3 cm.
OBJECT NAME: Figure group
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1760
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 65.388
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 431
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, 1944.
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.
The figure group of six children represents an allegory of fall harvest. The wine cask has a lid on which two of the children rest and it can be used as a container. The children prepare the grapes for wine making, drink wine, and play musical instruments. One of the figures at the base of the wine cask is a cupid. Although the Meissen modelers produced figures of children quite early in the history of the manufactory, figures and figure groups featuring children and child cupids became more common after the Seven Years War (1756-1763).
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 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.
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 1760
1760
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.65.388ab
catalog number
65.388ab
accession number
262623
collector/donor number
431

Meissen figure group

TITLE: Meissen figure group of cupids by a columnMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 8¾" 22.3 cm.OBJECT NAME: Figure groupPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1750-1760SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Colle
Description
TITLE: Meissen figure group of cupids by a column
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 8¾" 22.3 cm.
OBJECT NAME: Figure group
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1750-1760
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 73.179 a,b
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 508
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue on the larger section.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
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.
The three cupids honor a personage crowned with a laurel wreath represented in a medallion on the column. One of the cupids, dressed in the military attire of ancient Rome, suggests that the person honored is a military figure. Laurel wreaths, made from the broadleaf evergreen bay tree, were placed on the heads of victors in the Olympic Games of ancient Greece. Poets were also honored with this emblem, and still are in a figurative sense when appointed “poet laureate.” Military commanders and leaders of empire like the Caesars of Rome were often portrayed with a laurel wreath encircling their heads on coins, and following the classical style it was common to use the emblem in representations of eighteenth-century rulers, military leaders, and poets, especially after their death.
This group has two parts that combine to make the whole; the seated cupid rests on the smaller section. It is possible that the group was made from two unrelated models.
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 group is painted in overglaze enamel colors and gold, although the modeling on the base of the larger section is not gilded to match the smaller piece.
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.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 466-467.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1750-1760
1750-1760
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.73.179ab
catalog number
73.179ab
accession number
308538
collector/donor number
508

Meissen rinsing bowl (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 rinsing bowl is from a tea and coffee service in 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.
All the items from this tea and coffee set 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.
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.61.69E
catalog number
61.69E
collector/donor number
466
accession number
240074

Meissen figure of a deer: one of a pair

TITLE: Meissen: A pair of doesMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 4½" 11.5 cmOBJECT NAME: Animal figuresPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1758SUBJECT: The Hans Syz CollectionArtDomestic Furnis
Description
TITLE: Meissen: A pair of does
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 4½" 11.5 cm
OBJECT NAME: Animal figures
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1758
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 76.375 A,B
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 359,360
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARK: Crossed swords in underglaze blue.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
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) modeled the two does in about 1758 from an original group that comprised a doe and two dogs. The figures may be based on one of series of prints by Johann Elias Ridinger (1698-1767) 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 figures may have originated from Kaendler’s own observations of live animals. In his work books held in the Meissen Manufactory archives, Kaendler frequently refers to models that he changed or amended over the years; from a clay model taken from the existing molds it was possible to refashion a figure or figure group.
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, and these figures were probably part of a herd of deer. 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 animals are 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 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. 482-483.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1755
1755
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.76.375B
catalog number
76.375B
accession number
1977.0166
collector/donor number
360

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. 9½" 24.2cm
OBJECT NAME: Plate
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1760
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 63.243
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 955
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “K.H.K/4” in overglaze purple; “22” impressed.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1954.
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 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 diaper basket weave pattern that covers the surface except for the four reserves in which sprays of flowers are painted in onglaze enamels. Modeled in light relief the process of carving a relief pattern into plaster of Paris was laborious and required considerable skill. The sources for designs in relief came from pattern books and engravings, especially those by the French designer Jean Bérain the Elder (1638-1711), the Nuremberg designer Paul Decker (1677-1713), and the later rococo designer, François Cuvilliés the Elder (1695-1768). Their designs were applied in architectural details, interior stucco work and wood carving, on furniture, wall coverings, and ceramics.
European flower decoration was informed by printed books acquired by the Meissen manufactory in response to the growing fascination for the natural sciences among the educated elite. For the earlier German flowers (deutsche Blumen) the painters referred to Johann Wilhelm Weinmann’s Phytantoza Iconographia (Nuremberg 1737-1745). The botanical style of flower painting at Meissen developed into the looser and somewhat overblown mannered flowers (manier Blumen) based on the work of still-life flower painters and interior designers like Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (1636-1699) and Louis Tessier (1719?-1781), later referred to as naturalistic flowers
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower and fruit painters were paid less than workers who specialized in figures and landscapes, and most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage. Details in gold were applied by specialists in gold painting and polishing at Meissen. In the late eighteenth century flower painters were even busier and consumer taste for floral decoration on domestic “china” has endured into our own time, but with the exception of a manufactory like Meissen most floral patterns are now applied by transfers and are not hand-painted directly onto the porcelain.
The mark “K.H.K.” painted in overglaze purple refers to the Royal Court Kitchen (Königliche Hofküche) to which this plate one belonged.
On Meissen’s relief decoration see Reinheckel, G., 1968, ‘Plastiche Dekorationsformen im Meissner Porzellan des 18 Jahrhunderts’ in Keramos, 41/42, Juli/Oktober.
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. 382-383.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1760
1760
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.63.247
accession number
250446
catalog number
63.247
collector/donor number
955

Meissen cup 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. See Stephen H. Goddard, 1984, Sets and Series: Prints from the Low Countries; 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.61.69Fab
catalog number
61.69Fab
accession number
240074
collector/donor number
468

Meissen chinoiserie teapot and cover

TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie teapot and coverMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie teapot and cover
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 5" 12.8cm
OBJECT NAME: Teapot
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1725-1735
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 76.366 ab
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 321
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue.
PURCHASED FROM: Simon Maier, New York, 1943.
This teapot is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in 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.
This pear-shaped teapot has a silver gilt repair on the spout with a mask at its base where it joins the body of the teapot. The teapot is 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 and through garden landscapes carrying fans, kites or parasols beside exuberant flowers and foliage. Here a figure holding a parasol and carrying a small basket walks over rocky ground. On the other side of the teapot a figure runs with a kite flying aloft behind him. Large clusters of Indian flowers (indiansiche Blumen) recognizable as chrysanthemums, but characteristically out of scale with the figures, frame the subjects.
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
Hans Syz, Jefferson Miller II, J., Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 90-91.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1725-1735
1725-1735
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.76.366ab
catalog number
76.366ab
accession number
1977.0166
collector/donor number
321ab

Meissen coffee pot and cover

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 coffee pot is from a tea service in the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
All the items from this tea and coffee set 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
ca 1750-1760
1750-1760
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.61.69Aab
catalog number
61.69Aab
collector/donor number
462
accession number
240074

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. 14⅜"; 36.5cm
OBJECT NAME: Dish
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: Mid-eighteenth century
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 245497.3
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 10
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “67” impressed; /// incised.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1941. Ex Coll. Sir Phillip Sassoon.
This circular 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 dish is from a large dinner service of which most pieces are Meissen but with some items made at the Höchst manufactory, presumably as replacements for the Meissen service. With a petal-shaped edge the plate has a molded foliate design on the flange and center known as the Gotzkowsky pattern, after the Berlin porcelain entrepreneur Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky (1710-1775), a pattern also known as “raised flowers” (erhabene Blumen) first modeled in 1741.
Following the appointment to the manufactory in 1733 of court sculptor Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775), modeling techniques became more sophisticated. The process of creating shallow relief patterns was laborious and required considerable skill. The sources for designs in relief came from pattern books and engravings, especially those by the French designer Jean Bérain the Elder (1638-1711), and the Nuremberg designer Paul Decker (1677-1713) among many others. Later rococo designs in the French style were disseminated through the German states principally by François Cuvilliés the Elder (1695-1768). These designs were applied in architecture, interior stucco work and wood carving, furniture, wall coverings, and ceramics.
Painted in onglaze enamel are sprays of natural flowers and on the rim there is a gold diaper pattern.
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.
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. Decoration in gold was applied by specialists in gold painting and polishing at Meissen.
On relief patterns and three dimensional modeling at Meissen see Reinheckel, G., 1968, ‘Plastiche Dekorationsformen im Meissner Porzellan des 18 Jahrhunderts’ in Keramos, 41/42, Juli/Oktober.
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.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei , pp. 390-391.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1745
1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.245497.3
catalog number
245497.3
accession number
245497
collector/donor number
10

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. 13½" 34.2cm
OBJECT NAME: Dish
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1725-1730
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 73.31
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 1625
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords with a dot above the pommels in underglaze blue.
PURCHASED FROM: Acquired in 1973 from The Antique Porcelain Company.
This 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 dish, painted in onglaze enamels in the Imari style, also has decorative motifs characteristic of the Chinese famille verte porcelains. In the blue panels there are stylized chrysanthemum medallions and on the white reserves fly phoenixes or Japanese hō-ō birds and a butterfly. An elaborate floral arrangement fills the central reserve of the dish. On the underside of the flange are three floral sprigs, fish, and shrimps painted in underglaze blue.
Several Chinese dishes of the Kangxi period (1662-1722) are in the porcelain collection of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden to which this Meissen dish is clearly related. When the Chinese resumed porcelain production at Jingdezhen following civil unrest after the collapse of the Ming dynasty in 1644 they lost no time in imitating Japanese porcelain, and the Imari style had export potential for the Chinese on the European market where Japanese Imari was in great demand, and Chinese success in imitating Japanese Imari contributed largely to the collapse of the export trade in Japan by the middle of the eighteenth century. The Meissen dish represents a highly successful fusion of both Chinese and Japanese decorative elements, convincingly Far Eastern for the European market.
Japanese Imari wares came from kilns near the town of Arita in the north-western region of Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost island, and were exported by the Dutch and the Chinese through the port of Imari from their trading base on the island of Dejima in the Bay of Nagasaki. Decorated in the Aka-e-machi, the enameling center in Arita, Imari wares are generally distinguished from those made in the Kakiemon style by the darker palette of enamel colors anchored by dark blue, iron-red, and gold forming densely patterned surfaces influenced by contemporary textile designs.
Original Japanese Imari collected by the European aristocracy was much admired for its opulent decorative style. When no longer imported to Europe imitations of the Imari style gained wider popularity later in the eighteenth century, most notably in the products of the English Worcester and Derby porcelain manufactories, and Royal Crown Derby continues to produce a derivative pattern called Traditional Imari today.
For examples of a Chinese plate imitating Japanese Imari decoration alongside a Meissen plate very similar to the one seen here see Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, p.246.
On Chinese famille verte porcelains see Valenstein, S. G., 1975 (1989), A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, pp. 227-236.
For a detailed account of the Imari 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, and with another example of the Chinese version of this pattern on p.236. See also Rotondo-McCord, L., 1997, Imari: Japanese Porcelain for European Palaces: The Freda and Ralph Lupin Collection; Goro Shimura, 2008, The Story of Imari: the Symbols and Mysteries of antique Japanese Porcelain.
Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp.196-197.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1725-1730
1725-1730
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.73.31
catalog number
73.31
accession number
306525
collector/donor number
1625

Meissen teapot (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 teapot 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 set 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.61.69Cab
catalog number
61.69Cab
collector/donor number
464
accession number
240074

Meissen figure of a drinker

TITLE: Meissen figure of a drinkerMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 4¾" 12.1 cmOBJECT NAME: FigurePLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1745-1750SUBJECT: The Hans Syz CollectionArtDomestic Furni
Description
TITLE: Meissen figure of a drinker
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 4¾" 12.1 cm
OBJECT NAME: Figure
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1745-1750
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 75.190
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 432
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords on an unglazed base.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
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.
A figure of a man drinking, variously described as Dutch or Polish, was modeled by Johann Friedrich Eberlein (1685-1749) in the mid-to-late 1740s. Figures of this type were not seen in isolation, but formed part of a group representing the world of the rural peasant or city people of foreign lands displayed alongside sugar sculptures on the dessert table for the entertainment of guests. Small models of dwellings completed the illusion of place created in miniature form. The Saxon court held events in which its members impersonated people living on the land, creating for themselves a fantasy about those living on the opposite spectrum of the social hierarchy.
Figures of drinkers, or topers, were common to the repertoire of small-scale sculpture in many eighteenth-century porcelain manufactories, and in the fine earthenware and faience manufactories.
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 figure 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.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 424-425.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1745-1750
1745-1750
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.75.190
catalog number
75.190
collector/donor number
432
accession number
319073

Meissen figure group of a centaur with a cupid

TITLE: Meissen figure group of a centaur with a cupidMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 8⅝" 22 cmOBJECT NAME: Figure groupPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1755-1760SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Coll
Description
TITLE: Meissen figure group of a centaur with a cupid
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 8⅝" 22 cm
OBJECT NAME: Figure group
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1755-1760
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 75.191
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 517
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARK: None
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
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 by Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775) in 1756, the subject of a centaur teased by Cupid probably originated in a bronze sculpture of the 2nd century BCE. A marble copy recorded in the Villa Borghese in Rome in 1638 and purchased in 1807 by Napolean Bonaparte is now in the Louvre in Paris. François Perrier (1590-1650) engraved the subject in 1638 for his collection of prints representing the finest examples of Roman statuary, and numerous reduced versions were subsequently made in bronze, wood, plaster and terracotta. The centaur stands in the original version with cupid on his back, but here the centaur is about to rise from the ground in an attempt to rid himself of the mischievous cupid tugging at his hair. 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 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.
On the Centaur with Cupid see Haskell, A., Penny, N., 1981, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, p.179. On the centaur see Grafton, A., Most, G.W., Settis, S., eds. 2010, The Classical Tradition, p. 187.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 434-435.
date made
ca 1755-1760
1755-1760
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.75.191
catalog number
75.191
accession number
319073
collector/donor number
517

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 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 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.78.428B
catalog number
78.428B
collector/donor number
5B
accession number
1978.2185

Meissen figure: man with pug dog

TITLE: Meissen figure of a man with a pug dogMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 4¾" 12.1 cm.OBJECT NAME: Figure groupPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1740SUBJECT: The Hans Syz CollectionArtD
Description
TITLE: Meissen figure of a man with a pug dog
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 4¾" 12.1 cm.
OBJECT NAME: Figure group
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: 76.369
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 48
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARK: None
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1941.
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.
Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775) received a commission from Elector of Saxony and King of Poland August III to model a family group of pug dogs in 1741, and in 1736 Kaendler's work book records the re-modeling of 4 cane handles with pugs. (“4 Stock Hacken mit Mops geandert…” see Die Arbeitsberichte des Meissener Porzellanmodelleurs Johann Joachim Kaendler 1706-1775, Leipzig, 2002, p.39). In this piece a man plays with a pug performing its tricks.
Pugs, or “Mops” in German, are an ancient breed known in China in at least 500 BCE that became 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.
The pug was emblematic of 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. The illegitimate son of the Saxon Elector and King of Poland, Count Rutowski, established a lodge in Dresden in 1741 with his Turkish mistress Fatima; women were admitted to this alternative Masonic Order of the Pug.
This figure group was modeled by Johann Friedrich Eberlein (1696-1749), a talented sculptor who worked in collaboration with Kaendler on several projects until his death in 1749 (see ID number 60.168 for a pair of pug dogs modeled by Kaendler).
Meissen models of pugs and of figures with pugs like this one 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 from life by Johann Joachim Kaendler in life size.
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 group is painted in overglaze enamel colors and gold.
On the pug dog models see Ulrich Pietsch and Claudia Banz, 2010,Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie 1710-1815, pp.307-308.
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.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 422-423.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740
1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.76.369
catalog number
76.369
accession number
1977.0166
collector/donor number
48

Meissen milk pot (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 milk pot 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 set 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. Gold painted decoration was applied by Meissen workers who specialised in the technique.
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. See Stephen H. Goddard, 1984, Sets and Series: Prints from the Low Countries; 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.61.69Bab
catalog number
61.69Bab
collector/donor number
463
accession number
240074

Meissen lemon basket (from a plat de ménage)

TITLE: Meissen lemon basket from a Plat de MénageMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen lemon basket from a Plat de Ménage
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 10¾" 27.3cm
OBJECT NAME: Lemon basket
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1735-1740
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 63.263
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 53
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: None
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1941.
This lemon basket 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 lemon basket 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 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. Lemon baskets stood higher than the cruets, supported by figures like the two wrestling putti seen here were designed to attract the eye to the fruit piled within the basket or ‘shell.’ Lemons were a luxury in the eighteenth century and were meant to impress the diners. Imported from the Mediterranean countries or grown further north in conservatories and greenhouses, they were an important culinary item and flavoring for fish, meat and salads then as they are today.
The ‘plat de ménage’ gave Meissen modelers great scope for creating impressive centerpieces for major table services, but this lemon basket belongs to a less imposing model that was, nevertheless, in regular production through several versions in or even before 1735, and which continued into the early twentieth century with many variations. In August of 1735 Johann Joachim Kaendler recorded renewing and making higher a lemon ‘shell’ with two children standing on a rock (Die Arbeitsberichte des Meissener Porzellanmodelleurs Johann Joachim Kaendler 1706-1775, 2002, p.33).
This lemon basket has a quatrefoil shape with a band of relief-molded scrolls and strapwork on its exterior. The interior has East Asian flora painted in onglaze enamel with a bird perched on a stem. The coat of arms may belong to minor gentry or an entrepreneurial family with the name of Hopfner or Höpfner indicated by the entwined vines suggestive of hops.
Not many Meissen pieces from a table service with this pattern exist: a sugar box can be seen online at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, # C92&A-1929; see also Weber, J., 2013, Meissener Pozellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern: Stiftung Ernst Schneider in Schloss Lustheim, p. 465.
On the ‘plat de ménage’ see Katherina Hantschmann, “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
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 288-289.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
c.1737-1740
19th century
1737-1740
91737-1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.63.263
catalog number
63.263
accession number
250446
collector/donor number
53

Meissen figure of a grape seller

TITLE: Meissen figure of a grape sellerMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 5¼" 14.6 cm.OBJECT NAME: FigurePLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1753-1754SUBJECT: The Hans Syz CollectionArtDomestic
Description
TITLE: Meissen figure of a grape seller
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 5¼" 14.6 cm.
OBJECT NAME: Figure
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1753-1754
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 76.371
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 243
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARK: Crossed swords in underglaze blue.
PURCHASED FROM: E. Pinkus, New York, 1943.
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.
Paris and London, two bustling commercial cities, generated a large population of street vendors providing hot beverages like coffee and chocolate, bread rolls, pies, and buns. Fruits and vegetables from nearby farms were sold when in season, as well as luxury fruits like oranges and lemons imported from Spain. Grapes, which this young man sells, were of course available in France, but had to be transported across country to Paris. Herbs and items like watercress were collected in the countryside and sold on the streets for use in salads and for medicinal purposes.
This figure, probably modeled by Johann Joachim Kaendler(1706-1775) and Peter Reinicke (1715-1768, belongs to a series taken from designs for the Cries of Paris by the Parisian engraver Christophe Huet (1692-1765), and possibly commissioned by Johann Joachim Kaendler on a visit to Paris in the early 1750s. In this second series of the Cries of Paris the style of modeling is less animated than the earlier group modeled by Kaendler after the drawings by Edmé Bouchardon. The figure carries a pair of scales over his left arm for weighing the grapes.
The subject of street traders in the visual arts has a long history reaching back into the cities of the ancient world. City inhabitants, especially the working poor who lived in cramped accommodations with little or no facilities for cooking, depended heavily on the fast food and drink provided by street vendors and bake houses. Street sellers were themselves poor, and the range of goods sold or bartered varied widely, limited only by what could be carried by the individual, wheeled in a barrow, or loaded onto a donkey, mule or ass sometimes pulling a cart. People of a higher social class regarded street traders with contempt on the one hand, but also as colorful curiosities on the other, often in conflict with one another and with city authorities. In 1500, a series of anonymous woodcuts titled the Cries of Paris was an early example of what became a highly popular genre in print form well into the nineteenth century, and especially so in commercially active cities like Paris and London where street sellers formed not only part of the spectacle of display and consumption, but also the raucous sound of the street as they vocalized their merchandise
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 figure is painted in overglaze enamel colors and gold.
On street traders see Shesgreen, S., 1990, The Criers and Hawkers of London: Engravings and Drawings by Marcellus Laroon.
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.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 454-455.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1750-1760
1750-1760
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.76.371
catalog number
76.371
accession number
1977.0166
collector/donor number
243

Meissen chinoiserie vase

TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie vaseMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 10⅞" 27.6cmOBJECT NAME: VasePLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1730-35SUBJECT: ArtDomestic FurnishingIndustry and ManufacturingCREDIT LINE
Description
TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie vase
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 10⅞" 27.6cm
OBJECT NAME: Vase
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1730-35
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 64.429
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 788
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: “AR” monogram in blue on unglazed base.
PURCHASED FROM: Blumka Gallery, New York, 1948.
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.
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 hexagonal baluster-shaped vase has six chinoiseries framed by an arch painted in gold. The scenes depicted include the drinking of tea or rice wine, a discussion about a painting, a child playing a violin, and a game of blind-man’s-buff. Six more scenes are painted in purple on the section below that include two men who carry between them a small deer held in a rug, and in another scene a woman bathes a child in a small basin while another woman approaches carrying two babies in a basket on her head. A further six subjects are painted in polychrome on the section above the base with people amusing themselves drinking beverages and inspecting objects displayed by a vendor.
Items like this vase 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. The vase is painted in the style of Johann Gregor Höroldt. It was probably one of a pair, or a set of several pieces that comprised a garniture for ornamenting an interior feature like a mantel over a fireplace or shelf in a porcelain cabinet, which in the eighteenth century was a room devoted to a porcelain collection often hung with mirrors to reflect the objects and impress visitors. The “AR” mark on the base of the vase appears to have been introduced in 1723 and was still used in the early 1730s. It refers to porcelain belonging to Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland (1670-1733), or items given by him as gifts to members of the nobility.
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 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. 72-75.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1730-1735
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.64.429
catalog number
64.429
collector/donor number
788
accession number
257835

Meissen chinoiserie coffeepot and cover

TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie coffeepot and coverMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie coffeepot and cover
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 7" 17.8cm
OBJECT NAME: Coffeepot
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1725-1730
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 76.363 a,b
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 563 a,b
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “72” in gold (gold painter’s mark).
PURCHASED FROM: Julius Carlebach, New York, 1945.
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 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 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 one side of the coffeepot a servant brings a tray of food to a man sitting at a table in an exotic garden setting, on the other side a woman tends two children at play. On the cover are scenes of the preparation of tea, a subject common to many chinoiseries. 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.
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.
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.
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 gift-giving see Cassidy-Geiger, M., 2008, Fragile Diplomacy: Meissen Porcelain for European Courts 1710-1763.
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. 78-79.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1725-1730
1725-1730
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.76.363ab
catalog number
76.363ab
collector/donor number
563ab
accession number
1977.0166

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. 9½" 24.2cm
OBJECT NAME: Plate
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1750-1760
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 63.242
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 8
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “61” impressed.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1941.
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 spray of naturalistic flowers offset in the center with additional scattered flowers painted in overglaze 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-. The more formally correct German flowers were superseded by mannered flowers (manier Blumen), depicted in a looser and somewhat overblown style based on the work of still-life flower painters and interior designers like Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (1636-1699) and Louis Tessier (1719?-1781), later referred to as “naturalistic” flowers.
The basket weave border on the rim is in shallow relief known as the old Ozier (Alt Ozier) pattern. Following the appointment to the manufactory in 1733 of court sculptor Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775), modeling techniques became more sophisticated. The process of creating shallow relief patterns on table wares was laborious and required considerable skill. The sources for designs in relief came from pattern books and engravings, especially those by the French designer Jean Bérain the Elder (1638-1711), and the Nuremberg designer Paul Decker (1677-1713) among many others. Their designs were applied in architecture, interior stucco work and wood carving, furniture, wall coverings, and ceramics. The “old ozier” pattern seen here was first recorded at Meissen in 1736 as the work of the modeler Johann Friedrich Eberlein (1695-1749); “ozier” refers to the French and English term “osier” for the willow native to European wetlands from which the strong and flexible twigs are used to make wickerwork baskets. Here we see an early relief pattern dating back to 1736 with a style of flower painting of about fifteen to twenty years later. Re-use of original models and patterns was not uncommon at Meissen, and old stock might well remain unpainted for many years.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower and fruit painters were paid less than workers who specialized in figures and landscapes, and most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage. Details in gold were applied by specialists in gold painting and polishing at Meissen. 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 Alt Ozier pattern see Reinheckel, G., 1968, ‘Plastiche Dekorationsformen im Meissner Porzellan des 18 Jahrhunderts’ in Keramos, 41/42, Juli/Oktober, p.56.
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.384-385.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1750
1750
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.63.242
catalog number
63.242
accession number
250446
collector/donor number
8

Meissen figure of a pikeman

TITLE: Meissen figure of a pikemanMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: 4⅞" 12.4 cmOBJECT NAME: FigurePLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1750SUBJECT: The Hans Syz CollectionArtDomestic Furnishing
Description
TITLE: Meissen figure of a pikeman
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: 4⅞" 12.4 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: 78.430
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 507
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in blue on unglazed base.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
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 1745 Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775) modeled a series of soldier figures to be presented as a gift from the Saxon court for Karl Peter Ulrich von Holstein-Gottorp (later, and very briefly, Czar Peter III of Russia (1762)) who liked to play with toy soldiers throughout his adult life. This figure of a pikeman comes from that series, but originally appeared as a Saxon soldier dressed in a scarlet and white uniform.
Pikemen were in the front line of an advancing army. They lowered their pikes, consisting of a wooden shaft with a steel point on the end, to hinder the cavalry from breaking through to the ranks behind them. The pikemen caused injury to the horses, unseating their riders who were then open to attack from soldiers carrying muskets or swords.
War was seldom absent from European soil in the eighteenth century, and those that involved Saxony/Poland included the Great Northern War (1700-1721) between Russia and Sweden; the War of Polish Succession (1733-1735) in which Saxony/Poland was at the center of a conflict that spread to many parts of Europe; the War of Austrian Succession (1740-1748), which was a series of wars fought in an attempt to dismantle the Habsburg succession after the death of Charles VI in 1740; the Seven Years War of 1757-1763), a war that inflicted severe damage to Saxony at the hands of Prussia, and was the first global conflict with fighting between the French and the British in India and North America.
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.
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.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, p.456-457.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1750
1750
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.78.430
catalog number
78.430
collector/donor number
507
accession number
1978.2185

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