Meissen figure of a drinker
Meissen figure of a drinker
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- 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
- Object Name
- figurine
- date made
- ca 1745-1750
- 1745-1750
- maker
- Meissen Manufactory
- place made
- Germany: Saxony, Meissen
- Physical Description
- blue (overall color)
- polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)
- ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (overall material)
- Measurements
- overall: 4 3/4 in; 12.065 cm
- overall: 4 7/8 in x 2 1/2 in x 3 9/16 in; 12.3825 cm x 6.35 cm x 9.04875 cm
- ID Number
- CE.75.190
- catalog number
- 75.190
- collector/donor number
- 432
- accession number
- 319073
- Credit Line
- Dr. Hans Syz
- subject
- Manufacturing
- See more items in
- Cultural and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
- Domestic Furnishings
- Art
- The Hans C. Syz Collection
- Meissen Porcelain: The Hans Syz Collection
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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