Natural Resources
The natural resources collections offer centuries of evidence about how Americans have used the bounty of the American continent and coastal waters. Artifacts related to flood control, dam construction, and irrigation illustrate the nation's attempts to manage the natural world. Oil-drilling, iron-mining, and steel-making artifacts show the connection between natural resources and industrial strength.
Forestry is represented by saws, axes, a smokejumper's suit, and many other objects. Hooks, nets, and other gear from New England fisheries of the late 1800s are among the fishing artifacts, as well as more recent acquisitions from the Pacific Northwest and Chesapeake Bay. Whaling artifacts include harpoons, lances, scrimshaw etchings in whalebone, and several paintings of a whaler's work at sea. The modern environmental movement has contributed buttons and other protest artifacts on issues from scenic rivers to biodiversity.
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Page 1 of 452
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Meissen figure of a miner
- Description
- MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue.
- PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
- This figure of a miner 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.
- Saxony’s miners held a high status in comparison to other laboring communities, mining silver, lead, copper, cobalt, and bismuth out of the rich Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) in the south-west region of the Saxon State. The figure seen here represents a miner in his parade livery with an axe carried over his right shoulder. On his hat the emblem of crossed mining picks is painted in gold, and crossed swords - just like the mark on Meissen porcelains - are painted on his belt buckle. Miners worked hard rock to get at the ores, with water and toxic fumes their constant enemies. Smelters and furnace workers who processed the ores also belonged to the mining industry (bergbauindustrie), as did the surveyors responsible for mapping the complex underground seams of ore, and the engineers who built and worked the machinery that kept the mineshafts open.
- The Meissen modelers Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775) and Peter Reinicke (d. 1768) produced the original figure for this and other mining subjects. Kaendler, who joined Meissen in 1731 after working for the Dresden court sculptor Benjamin Thomae (1682-1751), developed a baroque style and a scale for porcelain figures that successfully exploited the nature of the material. The mining figures were based on prints from a publication by Christoph Weigel of Nuremberg, Die Abbildung und Beschreibung derer sämtlichen Berg-Wercks und Hütten Beamten und Bedienten nach ihrem gewöhnlichen Rang und Ordnung im behörigen Hütten-Habit [The representation and description of all the mining and metallurgy officials and their subordinates in appropriate livery according to their customary rank and order]. Mining personnel wore these garments at the elaborate parades that formed part of the court festivals held to celebrate anniversaries, betrothals, and weddings in the European court calendar. One of the most spectacular was the Saturn Festival held in 1719 to celebrate the marriage of Augustus II Elector of Saxony's son, the electoral prince Friedrich Augustus, to Princess Maria Josepha of Austria, the daughter of the Emperor Joseph I. (See Watanabe O'Kelly, H., Court Culture in Dresden: From Renaissance to Baroque, 2002).
- It was the custom in court entertainments to decorate banqueting tables with figures made from sugar, and the design of these elaborate ornaments was the task of the court sculptors. When Kaendler took up his post as a modeler at Meissen he was quick to see that porcelain could add to or replace sugar in this function. This figurine was one among many in a series that depicted the work of miners, and collectively formed a table decoration on this theme.
- The Meissen Manufactory uses the same techniques today to make individual figures and figure groups as it did in the eighteenth century. The original figure, sculpted in wax or modeler’s clay, is cut into smaller pieces from which plaster of Paris molds are taken. This miner is a relatively simple subject, but complex figure groups often require up to seventy separate molds. It is the job of the Meissen manufactory’s team of figure specialists to reassemble the figures from porcelain pressed into, and then released from the molds when still damp. The pieces are then stuck carefully in place and the complete figure group is dried slowly and evenly before firing. (See Pietsch, U. Triumph of the Blue Swords, 2010, pp. 61-67; pp.121-131).
- Syz, H., Rückert, R., Miller, J. J. II., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 440-441.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1750
- 1750
- maker
- Meissen Manufactory
- ID Number
- CE.65.387
- catalog number
- 65.387
- collector/donor number
- 422
- accession number
- 262623
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Meissen vase and cover with Far East pattern
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1730-1736
- maker
- Meissen Manufactory
- ID Number
- CE.P-1051ab
- catalog number
- P-1051ab
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Nyon porcelain sugar bowl (part of a service)
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- c.1800
- ID Number
- CE.P-490Bab
- catalog number
- P-490Bab
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Paris porcelain milk jug and cover
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- c.1775
- ID Number
- CE.P-105ab
- catalog number
- P-105ab
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Paris porcelain cup and saucer (part of a service)
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca. 1820
- ID Number
- CE.P-576Fab
- catalog number
- P-576Fab
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Paris porcelain sugar bowl and cover
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca.1820
- ID Number
- CE.P-576Cab
- catalog number
- P-576Cab
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Paris porcelain teapot (part of a service)
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca. 1820
- ID Number
- CE.P-576Bab
- catalog number
- P-576Bab
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Paris porcelain coffee pot (part of a service)
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca. 1820
- ID Number
- CE.P-576Aab
- catalog number
- P-576Aab
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Worcester porcelain cup and saucer
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- c. 1760-1775
- ID Number
- CE.P-429ab
- accession number
- 225282
- catalog number
- P-429ab
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Paris porcelain candlestick
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- c. 1810
- ID Number
- CE.P-1123
- catalog number
- P-1123
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Paris porcelain teapot
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- c.1810
- ID Number
- CE.P-1125ab
- catalog number
- P-1125ab
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Sugar bowl in the Egyptian style
- Description
- TITLE: Wedgwood sugar bowl and cover
- MAKER: Wedgwood Manufactory, Etruria
- PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Stoneware
- MEASUREMENTS: 3 1/8 in x 5 3/16 in x 4 5/16 in; 7.9375 cm x 13.17625 cm x 10.95375 cm
- OBJECT NAME: Sugar bowl and cover
- PLACE MADE: Staffordshire, England
- DATE MADE: 1800-1820
- SUBJECT: Art
- Domestic Furnishing
- Industry and Manufacturing
- CREDIT LINE:
- ID NUMBER: 65.92
- COLLECTOR/ DONOR: National Museum of American History, Division of Home and Community Life
- ACCESSION NUMBER: 272503
- MARKS: WEDGWOOD (/) two inverted "V"s, impressed
- This sugar bowl and cover made at the Wedgwood Manufactory, Etruria, is made in red stoneware (rosso antico) with a crocodile finial and Egyptianised hieroglyphic motifs applied in black basalt stoneware: a sphinx, the winged sun disk, the twin crocodiles, the canopus jar, the falcon god Horus, the Egyptian hunting dog, all adapted from sources of Roman and not of Egyptian origin. Josiah Wedgwood’s designers probably adapted the motifs from Bernard de Montfaucon's L'Antiquité expliquée et representée en figures (Antiquity explained and represented in illustrations), published in 1719. The original source Montfaucon used was a large bronze tablet inlaid with silver made in Rome, probably in about the 1st century CE, and known as the Mensa Isiaca of Turin. It can be seen today in the city of Turin’s Egyptian Museum.
- Egypt fascinated the Greeks and Romans centuries before this sugar bowl was made in England. The Romans were great producers and consumers of things, and through their knowledge of Egyptian culture they “Egyptianized” their own villas, temples, and grand monuments with objects taken from Egypt itself, or made in imitation of Egyptian models. Through the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire evidence of ancient Egypt slipped into obscurity, even in Rome itself as the city of imperial grandeur crumbled into ruin. Not until the European Renaissance, beginning in the fifteenth century, was the earlier fascination with Egypt revived, and by the late eighteenth century the process of rediscovering ancient Egypt was greatly enhanced by travelers from Europe documenting and publishing their experiences. Designers, artisans, and manufacturers were quick to pick up on the mystifying motifs, hieroglyphs, and iconic remains from Egyptian antiquity.
- Antico rosso (old red) stoneware was the name Wedgwood gave to this vitrified red clay. It was mined locally with the addition of calcined flint to improve the strength of the clay body and achieve a superior exterior surface suitable for turning on an engine lathe.
- Red stoneware was first introduced to the Staffordshire potteries in the late seventeenth century when two brothers, David and John Philip Elers, opened a pottery in Bradwell Wood where there was a deposit of a suitable iron rich red clay. Imported Chinese Yi-Hsing red stoneware tea wares inspired the introduction of this type of ceramic to Europe, and several Staffordshire potters imitated these products, especially the teapots. Josiah Wedgwood developed a red stoneware and used it for his tea wares in the Egyptian style made in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and most often for his vases inspired by the ancient Greek examples excavated in Italy during the eighteenth century.
- Further reading:
- Bob Brier, Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
- James Stevens Curl, Egyptomania, the Egyptian Revival: a Recurring Theme in the History of Taste, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994.
- Egyptomania: Egypt in Western Art 1730-1930, exhibition catalog, National Gallery of Canada with the Louvre, Paris, 1994.
- Gordon Elliott, 2006, Aspects of Ceramic History, Vol. II, p. 78.
- Frank L. Wood, 2014, The World of British Stoneware: Its History, manufacture and Wares.
- date made
- 1800-1825
- ID Number
- CE.65.92ab
- catalog number
- 65.92ab
- accession number
- 272503
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Pitcher, "The Cabinetmakers Arms"
- Description
- This earthenware pitcher is decorated with a transfer print of the Coat of Arms for the Cabinetmakers guild.
- This pitcher is part of the McCauley collection of American themed transfer print pottery. There is no mark on the pitcher to tell us who made it, but it is characteristic of wares made in large volume for the American market in both Staffordshire and Liverpool between 1790 and 1820. Pitchers of this shape, with a cream colored glaze over a pale earthenware clay, known as Liverpool type, were the most common vessels to feature transfer prints with subjects commemorating events and significant figures in the early decades of United States’ history. Notwithstanding the tense relationship between Britain and America, Liverpool and Staffordshire printers and potters seized the commercial opportunity offered them in the production of transfer printed earthenwares celebrating the heroes, the military victories, and the virtues of the young republic, and frequently all of these things at once.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- CE.63.086
- catalog number
- 63.086
- accession number
- 248881
- collector/donor number
- 321
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Worcester porcelain dessert dish
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- c.1770
- ID Number
- CE.P-825
- catalog number
- P-825
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Meissen saucer
- 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
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Stoneware jar
- Description
- The Remmey and Crolius families dominated the New York stoneware industry from the early 1700s through the early 1800s. Both families emigrated from Germany, bringing with them the stoneware traditions of their homeland. Sometimes business associates, the two families also inter-married. Remmey family members went on to establish stoneware factories in Philadelphia and Baltimore, as well.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1795-1830
- maker
- Remmey III, John
- ID Number
- 1980.0614.363
- accession number
- 1980.0614
- catalog number
- 1980.0614.363
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Stoneware jug
- Description
- Made by William Lundy in Troy, New York, the unusual decoration on this jug features two American flags and an anchor. An Irish immigrant, Lundy worked at a number of Troy potteries in the 1820s.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- about 1826
- maker
- Lundy, William
- Church, Jr., Nathan
- ID Number
- 1977.0803.139
- accession number
- 1977.0803
- catalog number
- 1977.0803.139
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Stoneware jug
- Description
- The conclusion of the War of 1812 devastated many American potteries as the importation of less expensive, foreign-made wares resumed, mostly from Great Britain and Holland. While a number of potteries went out of business, the Clark and Howe pottery in Athens, New York employed more men than any other pottery in the state, and even expanded into northwestern New York. The firm was in part responsible for sustaining the local economy, paying $1,750 in wages in 1812 (equal to over $22,000 today).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1805-1813
- maker
- Clark, Nathan
- Howe, Thomas
- ID Number
- 1977.0803.66
- accession number
- 1977.0803
- catalog number
- 1977.0803.066
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Stoneware butter jar
- Description
- This salt-glazed stoneware butter jar is decorated with hand applied cobalt, and is one of the earliest pieces made at the Athens, New York pottery established in 1805 by Nathan Clark and his brother-in-law, Thomas Howe. Howe died in 1813 leaving Clark to run and expand the company. He established subsidiaries in Kingston, Lyons, Rochester and Mt. Morris, New York between 1813 and 1838. The firm prospered until the end of the 1800s.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1805-1813
- maker
- Clark, Nathan
- Howe, Thomas
- ID Number
- 1977.0803.53
- accession number
- 1977.0803
- catalog number
- 1977.0803.053
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Meissen tea bowl and saucer
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- c.1725
- maker
- Meissen Manufactory
- ID Number
- CE.P-802ab
- catalog number
- P-802ab
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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