Meissen tea bowl and saucer

Object Details

Meissen Manufactory

Description

MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; two small incised crosses (former’s mark).

PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.

This tea bowl and saucer is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.

The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.

Meissen’s chinoiserie period began in the 1720s following the arrival from Vienna of Johann Gregor Höroldt (1696-1775) who brought with him superior skills in enamel painting on porcelain. His highly significant contribution to Meissen was to develop a palette of very fine bright enamel colors that had so far eluded the team of metallurgists at the manufactory, and that were new to onglaze enamel colors on faience and porcelain in general.

The tea bowl and saucer are painted with chinoiseries in the style associated with Johann Ehrenfried Stadler (1701-1741) who worked for Peter Eggebrecht’s Dresden faience manufactory before employment at Meissen. His work is associated with figures that stand, run or trot along fenced terraces carrying fans, kites or parasols beside exuberant flowers and foliage. On the saucer a man walks in a garden carrying a parasol, and on the tea bowl a man runs carrying a fan with an exotic bird flying overhead. Diaper and foliate patterned borders circle the interiors of the pieces.

Chinoiserie is from the French Chinois (Chinese) and refers to ornamentation that is Chinese-like. The style evolved in Europe as Chinese luxury products began to arrive in the West in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries through the major European trading companies. Artisans were quick to incorporate motifs from these products into their work and to imitate their material qualities, especially the Chinese lacquers, embroidered silks, and porcelains, but their imitation was not informed by first-hand knowledge of China or an understanding of Chinese conventions in two-dimensional representation, and instead a fanciful European vision emerged to become an ornamental style employed in garden and interior design, in cabinet making, faience and porcelain manufacture, and in textiles. Illustrated books began to appear in the second half of the seventeenth century that describe the topography of China, its peoples and their customs, and these sources were copied and used by designers, artists, printmakers, and artisans including Johann Gregor Höroldt at Meissen. Application of the term chinoiserie to this class of Meissen porcelains is problematic, however, because Johann Gregor Höroldt developed his ideas from a variety of sources and referred to the “chinoiseries” as “Japanese” (Japonische) figures, an early modern generic term for exotic artifacts and images imported from the East.

On Johann Gregor Höroldt see Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 17-25.

On chinoiserie see Impey, O., 1997, Chinoiserie: the Impact of Oriental Styles on Western Art and Decoration; on the porcelain trade and European exposure to the Chinese product see the exhibition catalog by Emerson, J., Chen, J., Gardner Gates, M., 2000, Porcelain Stories: from China to Europe

Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 90-91.

TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie tea bowl and saucer

MAKER: Meissen Manufactory

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)

MEASUREMENTS: Tea bowl: H. 1¾"4.5cm, Saucer: D. 4⅝" 11.8cm

OBJECT NAME: tea bowl and saucer

PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany

DATE MADE: 1725-35

SUBJECT: Art

Domestic Furnishing

Industry and Manufacturing

CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection

ID NUMBER: 76.365 a,b

COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 283

ACCESSION NUMBER:

(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)

Location

Currently not on view

Credit Line

Dr. Hans Syz

1725-1735

ID Number

CE.76.365ab

catalog number

76.365ab

accession number

1977.0166

collector/donor number

283ab

Object Name

bowl, tea

saucer

Physical Description

blue (saucer color)

blue (tea bowl color)

polychrome (component surface decoration color name)

garden scenes with figures (joint piece description of decoration)

garden scenes with figures (overall description of decoration)

ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (saucer material)

ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (tea bowl material)

Measurements

overall: bowl: 1 3/4 in; 4.445 cm

overall: saucer: 4 5/8 in; 11.7475 cm

overall tea bowl: 1 7/8 in x 3 in; 4.7625 cm x 7.62 cm

overall saucer: 1 in x 4 5/8 in; 2.54 cm x 11.7475 cm

place made

Germany: Saxony, Meissen

See more items in

Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass

The Hans C. Syz Collection

Meissen Porcelain: The Hans Syz Collection

Art

Domestic Furnishings

National Museum of American History

subject

Manufacturing

Record ID

nmah_573251

Metadata Usage (text)

CC0

GUID (Link to Original Record)

http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746a3-d3d9-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa