Industry & Manufacturing

The Museum's collections document centuries of remarkable changes in products, manufacturing processes, and the role of industry in American life. In the bargain, they preserve artifacts of great ingenuity, intricacy, and sometimes beauty.

The carding and spinning machinery built by Samuel Slater about 1790 helped establish the New England textile industry. Nylon-manufacturing machinery in the collections helped remake the same industry more than a century later. Machine tools from the 1850s are joined by a machine that produces computer chips. Thousands of patent models document the creativity of American innovators over more than 200 years.

The collections reach far beyond tools and machines. Some 460 episodes of the television series Industry on Parade celebrate American industry in the 1950s. Numerous photographic collections are a reminder of the scale and even the glamour of American industry.

MARKS: Crossed swrods in underglaze blue; "17" impressed.PURCHASED FROM: M.J.Ullmann, New York, 1948.This coffeepot is part of the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr.
Description
MARKS: Crossed swrods in underglaze blue; "17" impressed.
PURCHASED FROM: M.J.Ullmann, New York, 1948.
This coffeepot is part of the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychoanalysis and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in Germany, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
This pear-shaped coffeepot, reminiscent of metal prototypes, has a wishbone handle with a domed lid that has a pine kernel on the top. The insects and flowers painted on the pot are in the style of prints published after the original botanical and insect studies by the Flemish artist Joris (Georg) Hoefnagel (1542-1601). Joris Hoefnagel, who became court painter to the Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, employed his nineteen year old son Jacob to engrave the plates for the publication in 1592 of the Archetypa Studiaque Patris Georgii Hoefnagelii. After his father’s death Jacob Hoefnagel succeeded him as court painter to Rudolf II.
Prints after the Hoefnagel originals were so much in demand among artists and craftworkers, that the Nuremberg publishers purchased the copperplates and produced several further editions in the seventeenth century. The Nuremberg printmaker and publisher, Christoph Weigel (1654-1725), produced another edition in the early eighteenth century, which explains why a visual source from the late sixteenth century appears on Meissen porcelain nearly one hundred and fifty years later. (See Cassidy-Geiger, M., Graphic Sources for Meissen Porcelain, in Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 31, 1996, pp.99-126). However, when this coffeepot was made in 1740 the Hoefnagel style of trompe l’oeil was about to give way to the fashion for painting sprays of German flowers (deutsche blumen) on Meissen porcelain. This development indicated the beginnings of a preference for decorative motifs with local significance that struck a chord with an awakening sense of German national identity. By 1740, when this coffee pot was made, Meissen had a large, well-trained painting staff run by Johann Gregor Höroldt. Painters tended to specialize in figurative subjects, fruits and flowers, birds and animals, battle scenes, landscapes, harbor scenes, all of which were part of the repertoire by the middle of the eighteenth century. This coffeepot made in 1740 marks the transition from early modern sources of imagery to contemporary sources.
The seventeenth and eighteenth century expansion in the manufacture of consumer goods made more desirable and fashionable with ornamentation promoted the production of printed images and pattern books to which artisans could refer for their designs. The manufacturers of ceramics and printed textiles, interior painters and wallpaper makers, furniture makers, and embroiderers made use of these sources for surface decoration. When available, undecorated porcelain was taken into the workshops of professional enamel painters, the so-called Hausmaler or home painters. Amateur enamellers also painted white porcelain when they could acquire some.
On the history of the introduction of tea, coffee, and chocolate to Europe see Bowman, P.B., 1995, In Praise of Hot Liquors: The Study of Chocolate, Coffee and Tea-drinking 1600-1850.
On ornament see Snodin, M.,Howard, M., 1996, Ornament: A Social History Since 1450, especially the chapter “Ornament and the Printed Image”.
Syz, H., Rückert, R., Miller, J. J. II., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 358-359.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740
1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1983.0565.49
collector/donor number
797
accession number
1983.0565
catalog number
1983.0565.49
TITLE: Meissen: Pair of miniature vasesMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen: Pair of miniature vases
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 3⅛" 8cm
OBJECT NAME: Miniature vases
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1745
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1989.0715. 10 AB
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 213 AB
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “11” impressed.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art exchange, New York, 1942.
These miniature vases are from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
The miniature baluster-shaped vases have elaborate scroll handles and are painted in overglaze enamels with scattered German flowers (deutsche Blumen). European flowers began to appear on Meissen porcelain in about 1740 as the demand for Far Eastern patterns became less dominant and more high quality printed sources became available in conjunction with growing interest in the scientific study of flora and fauna. For German flowers Meissen painters referred to Johann Wilhelm Weinmann’s publication, the Phytantoza Iconographia (Nuremberg 1737-1745), in which many of the plates were engraved from drawings by the outstanding botanical illustrator Georg Dionys Ehret (1708-1770).
Other versions of these pear-shaped bottles have no handles and are decorated with Far Eastern patterns in polychrome enamels and underglaze blue. They were used for table decorations, and the visual climax of a festive dinner was the dessert, the course in which specially designed vessels in porcelain and glass supported artfully placed fruits, sweetmeats, jellies and creams, and for which the confectioners created elaborate tableaux in sugar that were later supplemented by porcelain figures and centerpieces.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower painters were paid less than workers who specialized in figures and landscapes, and most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage. In the late eighteenth century flower painters were even busier and consumer taste for floral decoration on domestic “china” has endured into our own time, but with the exception of a manufactory like Meissen most floral patterns are now applied by transfers and are not hand-painted directly onto the porcelain.
On the Meissen dinner services and table decorations see Ulrich Pietsch “Famous Eighteenth-Century Meissen Dinner Services” and Maureen Cassidy-Geiger “”The Hof-Conditorey in Dresden” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 94-105; 120-131.
On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meißener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp.368-369.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1745
1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1989.0715.10A
accession number
1989.0715
catalog number
1989.0715.10A
collector/donor number
213A
TITLE: Meissen cup and saucerMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 1⅞" 4.8cm; Saucer L. 5⅜" 13.7cm, W. 4⅞" 12.4cmOBJECT NAME: Cup and saucerPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: ca.
Description
TITLE: Meissen cup and saucer
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 1⅞" 4.8cm; Saucer L. 5⅜" 13.7cm, W. 4⅞" 12.4cm
OBJECT NAME: Cup and saucer
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: ca. 1730-1740
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1987.0896.09ab
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 435ab
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “22” in gold (gold painter’s number).
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
This cup and saucer is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
The quatrefoil shaped cup and saucer has a basket weave design on the exteriors with flowers in relief (erhabene Blumen) enclosed in reserves. On the interiors elaborate scrollwork in purple, iron-red and gold frame waterside subjects in polychrome onglaze enamels. The delicate scrollwork design belongs to the earlier baroque style at Meissen. On the interior of the cup two men in a small boat sail at the entrance to a harbor with buildings in view behind them. On the saucer a man rides a white horse while leading another brown horse beside him. In the background is a coastal landscape with a harbor in the distance.
Sources for enamel painted subjects like these ones came from the vast number of prints after paintings by Dutch and Flemish masters of the seventeenth century that formed a major part of Meissen’s output from the early 1720s until the 1750s. The Meissen manufactory accumulated folios of prints, about six to twelve in a set, as well as illustrated books and individual prints after the work of many European artists, especially the work of Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), Jan van de Velde (1593-1641), and Johann Wilhelm Baur (d.1640). Many of these landscape and waterside scenes were imaginary, and paintings of existing locations were often altered by the artist. Meissen painters were also encouraged to use their imagination in enamel painting using the prints as a guide. These subjects can be seen on items like fans, enameled copper objects, and painted interiors as well as on porcelain and faience. Their appeal lay in the pleasure of contemplating the tranquility and beauty of the landscape, or the fascination with trade represented in the harbor scenes. Printed images enriched people’s lives and a series of prints might take the viewer on a journey, real or imaginary. Prints performed a role in European visual culture later extended by photography and film, and they provided artisans and artists with images, motifs, and patterns applied in many branches of the applied arts.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Enamel painters specializing in landscapes, harbor, and river scenes with staffage (figures and animals) were paid more than those who painted flowers, fruits and underglaze blue patterns. Most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage or salary. Decorative scrollwork was the responsibility of another painter specializing in this form of decoration.
On Meissen sources for enamel painted subjects 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; Cassidy-Geiger, M., 1996, ‘Graphic Sources for Meissen Porcelain’ in Metropolitan Museum Journal, 31, pp.99-126.
On sets of prints see Goddard, S. H., 1984, Sets and Series: Prints from the Low Countries.
Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meissener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 298-299.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1730-1740
1730-1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1987.0896.09ab
catalog number
1987.0896.09ab
accession number
1987.0896
collector/donor number
435ab
TITLE: Meissen: Pair of miniature vasesMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen: Pair of miniature vases
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H. 3⅛" 8cm
OBJECT NAME: Miniature vases
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1745
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1989.0715. 10 AB
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 213 AB
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “11” impressed.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art exchange, New York, 1942.
These miniature vases are from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
The miniature baluster-shaped vases have elaborate scroll handles and are painted in overglaze enamels with scattered German flowers (deutsche Blumen). European flowers began to appear on Meissen porcelain in about 1740 as the demand for Far Eastern patterns became less dominant and more high quality printed sources became available in conjunction with growing interest in the scientific study of flora and fauna. For German flowers Meissen painters referred to Johann Wilhelm Weinmann’s publication, the Phytantoza Iconographia (Nuremberg 1737-1745), in which many of the plates were engraved from drawings by the outstanding botanical illustrator Georg Dionys Ehret (1708-1770).
Other versions of these pear-shaped bottles have no handles and are decorated with Far Eastern patterns in polychrome enamels and underglaze blue. They were used for table decorations, and the visual climax of a festive dinner was the dessert, the course in which specially designed vessels in porcelain and glass supported artfully placed fruits, sweetmeats, jellies and creams, and for which the confectioners created elaborate tableaux in sugar that were later supplemented by porcelain figures and centerpieces.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower painters were paid less than workers who specialized in figures and landscapes, and most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage. In the late eighteenth century flower painters were even busier and consumer taste for floral decoration on domestic “china” has endured into our own time, but with the exception of a manufactory like Meissen most floral patterns are now applied by transfers and are not hand-painted directly onto the porcelain.
On the Meissen dinner services and table decorations see Ulrich Pietsch “Famous Eighteenth-Century Meissen Dinner Services” and Maureen Cassidy-Geiger “”The Hof-Conditorey in Dresden” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 94-105; 120-131.
On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meißener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp.368-369.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1745
1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1989.0715.10B
accession number
1989.0715
catalog number
1989.0715.10B
collector/donor number
213B
TITLE: Meissen cup and saucerMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen cup and saucer
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 2⅝" 6.7cm; Saucer: 5¼" 13.3cm
OBJECT NAME: Cup and saucer
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1740
SUBJECT:
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1987.0896.15ab
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 496ab
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “17” impressed on saucer.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944
This cup and saucer is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
On this relatively unadorned cup and saucer figures are seen in idealized rural landscapes.
The Meissen painters generally based their images on prints after the numerous landscapes, real and imaginary, painted, etched, and engraved by seventeenth-century Dutch, Flemish and French artists, and they were encouraged to use their own imaginations to ensure that their work was unique to each porcelain piece in a set of vases or a table service. For this reason it is often impossible to trace a Meissen subject to a specific print. The popularity of these subjects eclipsed the earlier fascination with Chinese and Japanese designs and was symptomatic of the nobility’s idealized projection of themselves into a pastoral context, often with reference to the classical past in the inclusion of Italianate ruins or to the genre of Dutch paintings and prints that refer to the destruction incurred during the struggle with Spain in the early decades of the Eighty Years War (1568-1648).
On the saucer a well-dressed man and woman look out across a rural landscape with a farm in the distance. On the cup a continuous rural landscape has within it a peasant couple watching cattle with their dog before a ruined building. The women has a child resting on her lap.
Ruins feature is many paintings and prints from the Low Countries in the seventeenth century. Ruined and damaged buildings were indeed part of the landscape following the struggle against Spanish rule over a long period of eighty years (1568-1648).
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. Flower and fruit painters were more numerous than in other divisions, but according to demand painters were required to switch from one specialist area to another. On-glaze gold decoration was the work of specialist gold painters and polishers.
On graphic sources for Meissen’s painters see Möller, K. A., “’…fine copper pieces for the factory…’ Meissen Pieces Based on graphic originals” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 84-93.
On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meissener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136.
On Dutch landscape painting see Gibson, W. S., 2000, Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 310-311.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740
1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1987.0896.15ab
catalog number
1987.0896.15ab
accession number
1987.0896
collector/donor number
496ab
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.P-390ab
catalog number
P-390ab
accession number
225282
TITLE: Meissen coffee and tea serviceMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Two cups: H. 1¾" Two saucers: D. 5¼"; Coffeepot and cover: H. 9" 22.9cm; Teapot and cover: H. 4¼" 10.8cm; Milk jug and cover: H.
Description
TITLE: Meissen coffee and tea service
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Two cups: H. 1¾" Two saucers: D. 5¼"; Coffeepot and cover: H. 9" 22.9cm; Teapot and cover: H. 4¼" 10.8cm; Milk jug and cover: H. 5½"14cm; Sugar bowl and cover: H. 4¼" 10.8cm; Bowl: H. 3½" 8.9cm
OBJECT NAME: Coffee and tea service
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1740
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: Two cups and saucers 1981.0702.05; Coffee pot and cover 1981.0702.06ab; Teapot and cover 1981.0702.07ab; Milk jug and cover 1981.0702.08ab; Sugar bowl and cover 1981.0702.09ab. Rinsing bowl 1981.0702.10
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 354;355;356;357;358;894
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “O” impressed on sugar bowl; “21” impressed on rinsing bowl.
PURCHASED FROM: Ginsburg & Levy, New York, 1943.
This rinsing bowl is from a coffee and tea service in the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
The tea and coffee service has large tree peony flowers distributed along rooted brown twigs with two or three upright thorny stems in blue rising behind. The brown rim lines derive from original Kakiemon pieces in which a brown pigment applied to the rims before glazing was said to give some protection against chipping. The pattern has a symmetry that is not characteristic of Japanese Kakiemon-style porcelains, but for the European market Arita painters adapted some of their patterns to suit the preference for greater symmetry and less empty space. No Japanese prototype for this onglaze enamel painted pattern has come to light and it is possible that it is an adaptation by Meissen designers based on Japanese Kakiemon-style vessels in the royal porcelain collection in Dresden.
Kakiemon is the name given to very white (nigoshida meaning milky-white) finely potted Japanese porcelain made in the Nangawara Valley near the town of Arita in the North-West of the island of Kyushu. The porcelain bears a characteristic style of enamel painting using a palette of translucent colors painted with refined assymetric designs attributed to a family of painters with the name Kakiemon. In the 1650s, when Chinese porcelain was in short supply due to civil unrest following the fall of the Ming Dynasty to the Manchu in 1644, Arita porcelain was at first exported to Europe through the Dutch East India Company’s base on Dejima in the Bay of Nagasaki. The Japanese traded Arita porcelain only with Chinese, Korean, and Dutch merchants and the Chinese resold Japanese porcelain to the Dutch in Batavia (present day Jakarta), to the English and French at the port of Canton (present day Guangzhou) and Amoy (present day Xiamen. Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, obtained Japanese porcelain through his agents operating in Amsterdam who purchased items from Dutch merchants there and at the annual Leipzig Fair, and from a Dutch dealer in Dresden, Elizabeth Bassetouche.
For two more examples of this pattern see Pietsch, U., 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: the Wark Collectionfrom the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, p.265; see also Weber, J., 2013, Meissener Porzellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern: Stiftung Ernst Schneider in Schloss Lustheim, Band II, S. 195-198. Julia Weber identifies this pattern as one produced for the Parisian dealer Rodolphe Lemaire. On the origins of Arita porcelains see Takashi Nagatake, 2003, Classic Japanese Porcelain: Imari andKakiemon.
Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 172-173.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740
1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1981.0702.10
accession number
1981.0702
catalog number
1981.0702.10
collector/donor number
894
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1740-1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.P-744ab
catalog number
P-744ab
accession number
225282
TITLE: Meissen cup and saucerMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 1½" 3.8cm; Saucer: D.
Description
TITLE: Meissen cup and saucer
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 1½" 3.8cm; Saucer: D. 4¾" 12.1cm
OBJECT NAME: Cup and saucer
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE:1740-45
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1989.0715.08 a,b
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 521 a,b
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “A” in purple (painter’s mark); “63” impressed on saucer; “E” impressed on cup.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
This cup and saucer is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
The cup and saucer have yellow onglaze grounds on their exteriors. German flowers (deutsche Blumen) are painted in overglaze enamel on the two white reserves on the cup and on the interior of the saucer.
European flowers began to appear on Meissen porcelain in about 1740 as the demand for Far Eastern patterns became less dominant and more high quality printed sources became available in conjunction with growing interest in the scientific study of flora and fauna. For the German flowers Meissen painters referred, among other publications, to Johann Wilhelm Weinmann’s Phytantoza Iconographia (Nuremberg 1737-1745), in which many of the plates were engraved after drawings by the outstanding botanical illustrator Georg Dionys Ehret (1708-1770). The more formally correct German flowers were superseded by mannered flowers (manier Blumen), depicted in a looser and somewhat overblown style based on the work of still-life flower painters and interior designers like Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (1636-1699) and Louis Tessier (1719?-1781), later referred to as “naturalistic” flowers.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower painters were paid less than workers who specialized in figures and landscapes, and most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage. In the late eighteenth century flower painters were even busier and consumer taste for floral decoration on domestic “china” has endured into our own time, but with the exception of a manufactory like Meissen most floral patterns are now applied by transfers and are not hand-painted directly onto the porcelain.
On graphic sources for Meissen porcelain see Möller, K. A., “Meissen Pieces Based on Graphic Originals” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp.85-93; Cassidy-Geiger, M., 1996, ‘Graphic Sources for Meissen Porcelain’ in Metropolitan Museum Journal, 31, pp.99-126.
On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meißener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 366-367.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1730
1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1989.0715.08ab
catalog number
1989.0715.08ab
accession number
1989.0715
collector/donor number
521
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.P-746ab
catalog number
P-746ab
accession number
225282
TITLE: Meissen saucerMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: D.
Description
TITLE: Meissen saucer
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: D. 4⅝" 11.8cm
OBJECT NAME: Saucer
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1730-1740
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 72.16
COLLECTOR/DONOR: 1613
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue.
Gift from Dr. Andreina Torré, Ars Domi, Zurich, Switzerland, 1972.
This saucer is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
The interior of this saucer has a design in the Japanese Kakiemon style of two cranes and a bamboo trellis on which stylized flowers grow. On the exterior of the saucer there is a purple ground. The Meissen pattern was based on a Japanese Kakiemon prototype but it is not an exact copy.
Kakiemon is the name given to very white (nigoshida meaning milky-white) finely potted Japanese porcelain made in the Nangawara Valley near the town of Arita in the North-West of the island of Kyushu. The porcelain bears a characteristic style of enamel painting using a palette of translucent colors painted with refined assymetric designs attributed to a family of painters with the name Kakiemon. In the 1650s, when Chinese porcelain was in short supply due to civil unrest following the fall of the Ming Dynasty to the Manchu in 1644, Arita porcelain was at first exported to Europe through the Dutch East India Company’s base on the island of Dejima in the Bay of Nagasaki. The Japanese traded Arita porcelain only with Chinese, Korean, and Dutch merchants and the Chinese resold Japanese porcelain to the Dutch in Batavia (present day Jakarta), to the English and French at the port of Canton (present day Guangzhou) and Amoy (present day Xiamen). Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, obtained Japanese porcelain through his agents operating in Amsterdam who purchased items from Dutch merchants, and from a Dutch dealer in Dresden, Elizabeth Bassetouche.
For millennia cranes have held symbolic meaning across the globe featuring in the myths and legends of many peoples with a rich presence in visual culture from antiquity to the present day. In Japan the indigenous red-crowned crane is sacred and associated with longevity, fidelity, prosperity, and good health. Cranes commonly live for 40-60 years and they pair for life which accounts for their popularity as a symbol in Japan for a long and happy marriage, and they are often used as decoration on a bride’s kimono. The birds on this saucer are stylized and not faithful to the Japanese tradition of painting in which the red-crowned crane is easily identifiable.
For comparison see this subject painted on a tankard and cover in Hawes, S., Corsiglia, C., 1984, The Rita and Fritz Markus Collection of European Ceramics and Enamels, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, pp. 111-113. For an example of the pattern on a pair of cups and saucers see Pietsch, U., 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: the Wark Collectionfrom the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, p.286, and for other objects with the same pattern see pp.284-285; see also den Blaauwen, A. L., 2000, Meissen Porcelain in the Rijksmuseum, pp. 221-222 for an example of the design on a pair of vases with yellow grounds.
On the Japanese Kakiemon style and its European imitators see Ayers, J., Impey, O., Mallet, J.V.G., 1990, Porcelain for Palaces: the Fashion for Japan in Europe 1650-1750, with an example of the same pattern on a Meissen butter tub and cover p. 264, and for an example of the pattern on a Chelsea porcelain plate see p. 283.
Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 150-151.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1730-1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.72.016
catalog number
72.016
accession number
299566
collector/donor number
1613
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1735-1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.P-720ab
catalog number
P-720ab
accession number
225282
TITLE: Meissen cup and saucerMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 2⅝" 6.7cm; Saucer: D.
Description
TITLE: Meissen cup and saucer
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 2⅝" 6.7cm; Saucer: D. 5" 12.8cm
OBJECT NAME: Cup and saucer
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1740-45
SUBJECT:
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1987.0896.10ab
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 120ab
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “95” impressed on cup; “61” impressed on saucer.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1942.
This cup and saucer is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
The cup and saucer have solid gold grounds on their interior surfaces, and in white reserves there are waterside landscape scenes with figures. The Meissen painters generally based their images on prints after the numerous landscapes, real and imaginary, painted, etched, and engraved by seventeenth-century Dutch, Flemish and French artists, and Meissen painters were encouraged to use their imagination to ensure that their work was unique to each porcelain piece in a set of vases, a snuff box, or table service. For this reason it is often impossible to trace a Meissen subject to a specific print. The popularity of these subjects eclipsed the earlier fascination with Chinese and Japanese designs and was symptomatic of the nobility’s idealized projection of their persons into a pastoral context.
The scenes on the exterior of the cup and interior of the saucer represent the landowning class in a rural context. It could be assumed that the grand mansion in the background of the painting on the saucer is the home of the well-dressed couple with a child in the foreground. On the cup, in a continuous rural landscape, a man on horseback addresses a woman who has her hand on a large basket, perhaps full of fish as the river is close by. In the background we see a church surrounded by a small village.
The Meissen manufactory accumulated folios of prints, about six to twelve in a set, as well as illustrated books and individual prints after the work of many Dutch artists, especially Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), Jan van de Velde (1593-1641), and Johann Wilhelm Baur (d.1640). These print series were intended to bring pleasure in viewing diverse landscape subjects that led a person on a journey or opened a window for the imagination.
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower and fruit painters were paid less than workers who specialized in figures and landscapes, and most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage. On-glaze gold decoration was the work of specialist gold painters and polishers, and polishing in particular required careful handling of the porcelain because of its tendency to spring apart. On this cup and saucer the marks from polishing can be seen on the gold ground surrounding the enamel painted subjects, and they are especially clear on the saucer.
On graphic sources for Meissen’s painters see Möller, K. A., “’…fine copper pieces for the factory…’ Meissen Pieces Based on graphic originals” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 84-93.
On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meissener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136.
On Dutch landscape painting see Gibson, W. S., 2000, Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 304-305.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740-1745
1740-1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1987.0896.10ab
catalog number
1987.0896.10ab
accession number
1987.0896
collector/donor number
120ab
TITLE: Meissen tea bowl and saucerMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 2" 5.1cm; Saucer: D.
Description
TITLE: Meissen tea bowl and saucer
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 2" 5.1cm; Saucer: D. 5⅛" 13.1cm
OBJECT NAME: Tea bowl and saucer
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1740-1745
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1989.0715.07a,b
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 1241a,b
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “↗↗” impressed.
PURCHASED FROM: William H. Lautz, New York, 1962.
This tea bowl and saucer is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
The butterflies and insects painted in onglaze enamels on this tea bowl and saucer were based on late sixteenth and seventeenth-century books made available to the Meissen manufactory, for example: Joris and Jacob Höfnagel’s Archetypa Studiaque Patris Georgii Hoefnagelii (1592), Maria Sybilla Merian’s Neues Blumenbuch (1675-1683) and Wenzel Hollar’s (1607-1677) illustrations of flora and fauna. These virtuoso works depicting plants and insects were used as pattern books by artists and artisans in the making of luxury artifacts well into the eighteenth century. Imagery of this kind appealed to the educated elite who developed an intense interest in nature in the search to understand flora and fauna according to the early modern concept of a planned creation of the world. Insects were appreciated for their uncommon beauty and mysterious life cycles.
The Meissen painter has copied the convention of depicting these insects with faint shadows, a conceit used by Joris Hoefnagel to trick the eye into seeing the creature as though it had just alighted on the surface of a page.
On the early sources for Meissen flower painting see Cassidy-Geiger, M., 1996, ‘Graphic Sources for Meissen Porcelain’ in Metropolitan Museum Journal, 31, pp.99-126
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp.360-361.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740-1745
1740-1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1989.0715.07ab
accession number
1989.0715
catalog number
1989.0715.07ab
collector/donor number
1241
TITLE: Meissen rinsing bowlMAKER: Meissen ManufactoryPHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)MEASUREMENTS: H.3⅛" 8.5cmOBJECT NAME: Rinsing bowlPLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, GermanyDATE MADE: 1740-1750SUBJECT:ArtDomestic FurnishingIndustry and ManufacturingCREDIT
Description
TITLE: Meissen rinsing bowl
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: H.3⅛" 8.5cm
OBJECT NAME: Rinsing bowl
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1740-1750
SUBJECT:
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1987.0896.14
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 452
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in undeglaze blue; “St” in gold (painter’s mark); “18” impressed.
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
This rinsing bowl is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
The subjects painted in polychrome enamels on this bowl were based on the large number of prints after paintings by Dutch artists of the seventeenth century that formed a major part of Meissen’s output from the early 1730s until the 1750s. The Meissen manufactory accumulated folios of prints, about six to twelve in a set, as well as illustrated books and individual prints after the work of many Dutch artists, especially Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), Jan van de Velde II(1593-1641), and Johann Wilhelm Baur (d.1640). Meissen painters often based their images on imaginary landscapes by Dutch artists, and were encouraged to use their imagination to ensure that their work was unique to each porcelain piece in a set of vases, a table or tea and coffee service.
The painting represents a continuous scene encircling the exterior of the bowl in which handsomely dressed so-called “Watteau” figures appear at rest on the banks of a river with their dog nearby, a man on horseback approaches along a path while a figure can be seen walking behind him. On the river a man and a woman are ferried to the opposite side. As the scene continues around the bowl a village appears in the distance and a man sits at rest beside the road. Subjects like this were symptomatic of the nobility’s idealized projection of their persons into a pastoral context that was perceived to be a site of simplicity and picturesque tranquility free of the obligations imposed by court society. At the same time it was a statement of land ownership where the privileged surveyed their possessions from their position of advantage?
The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower and fruit painters were paid less than workers who specialized in figures and landscapes, and most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage. On-glaze gold decoration was the work of specialist gold painters and polishers.
Rinsing bowls were used to dispense with tea and coffee dregs before refilling cups or tea bowls with fresh liquid.
On graphic sources for Meissen’s painters see Möller, K. A., “’…fine copper pieces for the factory…’ Meissen Pieces Based on graphic originals” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 84-93. On Dutch landscape painting see Gibson, W. S., 2000, Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael.
On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meissener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 308-309.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740-1745
1740-1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1987.0896.14
catalog number
1987.0896.14
accession number
1987.0896
collector/donor number
452
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1745
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.P-391ab
catalog number
P-391ab
accession number
225282
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.P-1053ab
catalog number
P-1053ab
accession number
225282
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.P-55ab
catalog number
P-55ab
accession number
225282
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1735-1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.P-717ab
catalog number
P-717ab
accession number
225282
MARKS: "22" impressed.PURCHASED FROM: E. Pinkus Antiques, New york, 1970.This plate is part of the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr.
Description
MARKS: "22" impressed.
PURCHASED FROM: E. Pinkus Antiques, New york, 1970.
This plate is part of 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.
Underglaze blue as seen on this plate was a challenge for the Meissen manufactory’s laboratory. Cobalt blue is one of few colors derived from metal oxides that can withstand high temperatures without vanishing, and for several centuries the German stoneware tradition used cobalt pigments to ornament vessels and tiles. However, firing porcelain at a much higher temperature meant that the oxide became unstable, causing it to bleed into the glaze, losing definition in the design. The blue color at Meissen was not pleasing either, especially in comparison to the bright blues characteristic of the most prized Chinese blue and white porcelain so much desired in the West.
The production of cobalt blue pigments (blaufarben) was one of the major metal and mineral industries of Saxony, so it was particularly frustrating to the Meissen team when faced with a problem that took many years to resolve. Mined since the early sixteenth century in the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) near Dresden, cobalt became a major source of blue pigments in Europe. Found combined with other metals and semi-metals – nickel, iron, copper, bismuth and arsenic – cobalt salts, after smelting and separation, were then processed into smalt, a pigment used by painters, and zaffer, a preparation used in enamel and glass production. However, neither of these pigments was suitable for underglaze painting on porcelain.
So keen was Augustus II, the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, to have underglaze blue decorated porcelain that he set an award of 1000 thalers for anyone who met with success in securing a reliable blue color. For many years the metallurgist David Köhler (1683?-1723), a member of the original team at Meissen, worked on the problem. So did Samuel Stölzel and two painters, Johann Georg Mehlhorn (c. 1671-1735) and Conrad Hunger (dates unknown) who received 300 thalers each when they presented the Elector with underglaze blue porcelain of rather mediocre quality. Köhler improved the stability of the pigment, but when he died in 1723, and when feldspar replaced alabaster in the porcelain body itself, further difficulties arose that were finally resolved in the late 1720s with a fine blue pigment on a whiter porcelain body. (Pietsch, U., Triumph of the Blue Swords, 2008, p.22)
This plate, produced in about 1740 when the manufactory had underglaze blue well under control, features the so-called ‘Zwiebelmuster’ or ‘onion’ pattern, probably introduced in this form in the late 1720s. It has long been assumed that the 'onion' pattern was a copy of a Chinese protoype, but it was a Meissen design with several variations based on Chinese motifs.(Pietsch,U., Triumph of the Blue Swords, 2010, p. 245). To ensure a consistent standard in the production of table services the ‘onion’ patterns were first ‘pounced’ onto the surface of the porcelain, leaving a traceable design for the painters to follow, a practice that continues at Meissen today.
Meissen’s blue and white ‘onion’ pattern was immensely successful, and modified versions are still in production. Underglaze blue painted in imitation of Meissen porcelains were produced at many European porcelain manufactories during the eighteenth century, and they became the preferred domestic choice for those who could afford to buy them. Consumers still find blue and white pottery, porcelain, and china attractive and desirable for everyday use in the home.
On underglaze blue painting at Meissen see Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 22-23.
Carswell, J., 1985, Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain and its impact on the Western World.
Syz, H., Rückert, R., Miller, J. J. II., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp 242-243.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740
1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
1984.1140.45
collector/donor number
1595
accession number
1984.1140
catalog number
1984.1140.45
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; "20" impressed.PURCHASED FROM: William Lautz, New York, 1958.This plate is part of the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of European Porcelain. Dr.
Description
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; "20" impressed.
PURCHASED FROM: William Lautz, New York, 1958.
This plate is part of the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of European Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the collector and New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962), formerly of Frankfurt-am-Main in Germany. Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychoanalysis and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in Saxony, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
Japanese porcelain prototypes had a greater impact on early Meissen porcelain than Chinese, a consequence of Augustus II Elector of Saxony’s preference for Japanese styles. This plate incorporates the two principle styles common to imported Japanese porcelains of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The Kakiemon style is represented in the top half of the plate with the so-called “red fox and yellow squirrel” pattern. In the lower half of the plate the diaper pattern represents the Imari style derived from Japanese textiles. The line that divides the two styles refers to a Japanese leaf-shaped dish in the Dresden porcelain collection with foliage and floral designs painted in underglaze blue.
Arita, in the Hizen province of Kyushu, the southernmost of the Japanese islands, was the center for the production of Japanese porcelains that includes Kakiemon and Imari. The province of Hizen has deposits of high grade kaolin suitable for porcelain production which began in about 1600. The name “Kakiemon” refers to the characteristic enamel painting from a kiln in Arita, attributed to a man called Sakaida Kakiemon who learned the secrets of enamelling from a Chinese potter. The story is unreliable, but Arita enamellers were active by the middle of the seventeenth century. “Imari” refers to enameled porcelains that range from lightly painted floral designs to the dense diaper or brocade pattern seen on the lower half of this plate. During the period of civil war in China, and for some time afterwards, there was a shortage of Chinese porcelain available for export to the West. The Dutch East India Company, based in Batavia (present day Jakarta in Indonesia) turned to Japanese porcelains, and by the 1640s the Japanese permitted them to establish a “factory” or warehouse on Deshima Island in Nagasaki harbor. In the 1670s Chinese trading vessels added to the distribution of Japanese porcelains to European ships trading out of South East Asian ports.
Japanese porcelain was more expensive than Chinese, which contributed to the decline in trade by the middle of the eighteenth century. Pieces were brought to Dresden by agents acting for the Elector Augustus from Dutch dealers in Amsterdam. Although not a discriminating collector, the high regard Augustus developed for Japanese porcelains is indicated by his decision to rebuild the palace housing his ceramic collection and change the name from the Dutch to the Japanese Palace. The Meissen manufactory began imitation of the Japanese Kakiemon style in about 1725, sometimes so faithfully that items were mistaken for Japanese originals and exploited as such by the French merchant Rodolphe Lemaire, who sold Meissen pieces in Paris at inflated prices claiming they were Japanese.
See Ayers, J., Impey, O., Mallet, J.V.G., Porcelain for Palaces: the fashion for Japan in Europe 1650-1750, 1990, pp. 45-47.
On the Hoym-Lemaire affair see Weber, J., 2013, Meissener Porzellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern, Band I, and on the squirrel pattern see Band II, S. 297-309.
Syz, H., Rückert, R., Miller, J. J. II., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp.136-137.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1740
1740
maker
Meissen Manufactory
ID Number
CE.71.205
catalog number
71.205
collector/donor number
1053
accession number
297499

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